Moscow Times on Adobe-DCMA-Atrocity
Al Qaeda
alqaeda at fbi.gov
Tue Jul 17 17:00:26 PDT 2001
http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=1532
Moscow Times covers Adobe PDF eBook decryption --
in PDF
ElcomSoft stops selling disputed
software, makes limited demo freely
available on Internet
8 July 2001
Adding a bit of an ironic twist to
the brewing
legal matter on alleged copyright
infringement between Adobe Systems
and
Moscow-based ElcomSoft Ltd., The
Moscow
Times reported the latest events in
its July 4
edition -- available in PDF.
Meanwhile,
Adobe Systems was closed the week
of the
national U.S. holiday.
In a page 9 article titled "E-Book
Duplicators
Hit Barnes & Noble," the online,
English-language newspaper quotes a
Barnes
& Noble VP as saying the company's
Internet
store "incurred considerable losses
due to the pause in sales of new bestsellers."
The company stopped sales for a day
late last month to allow Adobe to release
version (2.2) of its free Acrobat
eBook Reader, an upgrade with enhanced
security that could not be
decrypted by ElcomSoft's commercially available
Advanced Ebook Processor (AEBPR)
product.
The Times reports that -- as had
previously been forewarned in coverage on our
Planet eBook sister site -- in
response to Adobe's threatened legal action for
copyright infringement, ElcomSoft
is now giving away an updated, reduced
functionality version of AEBPR.
According to the company's Web site, this free
demo version of AEBPR 2.2 has been
modified to support limited decryption -- 25
percent of the content -- "only to
demonstrate that Adobe technology (used in
Adobe Content Server, Adobe WebBuy
and Acrobat eBook Reader) is still weak."
"The electronic book world has
produced its own Napster," Alexander Katalov,
Elcomsoft's General Manager, told
the Moscow Times. He also reportedly denied
blame for any wrongdoing, pointing
to PDF security as the real issue. In
defending the company's initial
development and sale of AEBPR, he told the Times
that the product "was often
purchased by people with poor eyesight, since
Adobe's e-book software did not
permit the use of programs for reading text out
loud."
In fact, Adobe's eBook Reader
does allow ebooks to be read
aloud (when using a computer
with voice activation
capabilities) -- *if* the
publisher, not Adobe -- chooses
to grant that permission.
Adobe had threatened ElcomSoft with
copyright infringement in violation of the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA), specifically Section 1201 -- for
circumventing its rights-protection
designed to guard the rights of publishers and
authors. In legal circles, there
currently are debates taking place over the use of
encryption systems for digital
content that are more restrictive for users than
laws dealing with printed books.
For example, its commonplace -- and legal -- for
someone to re-sell a printed book;
as an ebook, with most current technologies,
that would be considered a
violation of copyright.
The Moscow Times' article cites the
operator of a
Russian Web site on copyright as
saying that by
simply posting a URL where it now
freely gives
away AEBPR, ElcomSoft is safe from
prosecution
"according to current Russian
judicial practice."
Adobe Systems -- known in the
industry for its strong anti-piracy litigation --
seems likely to put that notion to
a test, while needing to take steps to further
strengthen PDF security and to
educate users on proper security implementation
techniques -- keeping in mind there
is no perfect, never-fail solution.
Like The Moscow Times, part of
Independent Media, The St. Petersburg Times
newspaper also publishes
English-language news from Russia -- also in PDF.
The complete 31-page, July 4 issue
is available online -- as a large PDF file [PDF:
6.2 MB] (and also in HTML).
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