United States v. ElcomSoft and Sklyarov

Dmitri Vitalyevich Skljarow (Russian: Дмитрий Витальевич Скляров, scientific transliteration Dmitry Vital'evič Skljarov; born 18 December 1974) is a Russian programmer. He gained notoriety when he was arrested in 2001 in the United States of America for an alleged violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in relation to a computer program created by him.

Skljarow was a student of physics concerned with cryptanalysis. At the same time he was employed by the Russian software company ElcomSoft, for which he created the Advanced eBook Processor software, The ( AEBPR ).

On 16 July 2001, after a lecture on " eBook's Security - Theory and Practice" was held at the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas, he was arrested by the FBI when he was just about to return to Moscow. He was accused of having created a product with which you can handle arrangements for the protection of copyright.

The day after his arrest several websites and mailing lists have been set up in order to organize the protest against the measure. Many of them used the slogan "Free Dmitry " or "Free Sklyarov ". The main aspect of this campaign was that at the DEF CON no violations of the DMCA have been committed and that the DMCA is not valid in Russia. From these viewpoints, was imprisoned Skljarow ( the site operator 's view ) for something that was completely legal according to the law. Furthermore, a campaign for a boycott of products of the company Adobe was started because this was regarded as a suspected cause of the incidents.

After Skljarows arrest, he was briefly detained in a regional prison in Las Vegas; after that he was in Oklahoma City in Federal Prisoner Transfer Center until August 3, 2001, when he was transferred to the Federal Building in San Jose ( California).

On 6 August 2001 Skljarow was released on bail of 50,000 U.S. dollars, which was forbidden him to leave Northern California. The charges against Skljarow were later dropped in exchange for testimony. He was allowed on 13 December 2001 to return to Russia.

On 18 December 2002 was found after a two-week trial in San Jose by a jury that ElcomSoft had unintentionally violated U.S. laws.

Currently, Skljarow lecturer at the Institute of Information Security of the Moscow State Technical University. He is married and has two children.