Dmitry Sklyarov

Dmitry Sklyarov is a Russian programmer.

He was arrested in the US after giving a presentation at the Defcon conference revealing that various products for allegedly securing electronic books were in fact extremely weak. He and his employer Elcomsoft were charged under the DMCA with distributing illegal tools to circumvent publishers' encryption technology. Both he and the publisher were eventually found not guilty on all charges.

Sklyarov was the first person [1] to be charged under the DMCA. The case became a cause celebre for opponents of the DMCA, and more generally for critics of DRM technology. There was a web site [2], a mailing list, calls to action [3] [4], demonstrations and lectures [5], even a "Boycott Adobe" campaign since it was Adobe who were behind the charges.

The case got extensive coverage [6] [7] in the computer industry press, and quite a bit [8] in mainstream media as well. After his release, Sklyarov was by interviewed by CNET and later by the Moscow Times.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation have a summary.