Stardate 20010718.1135 (On Screen): How to shoot yourself in the foot in one easy lesson. You have a convention attended by or closely followed by the world's greatest collection of hackers, crackers and computer thieves, many of which are ingenious and unprincipled. One of the speakers at that convention is from outside the country, and has finally come within reach, though he can only be charged under a blatantly unconstitutional law which has never really been tested in court before. So you, Adobe, have a talk with the FBI and get them to arrest said feature speaker at said hacker convention, to hold him without bail for felony trial under the DMCA. Nice work.
Adobe is toast. They've bearded the lion in its den. Their web servers will be DOSed, their software will be cracked and distributed widely, and you can forget about the security of their eBooks from now on. Their name is mud with a group of people that no software company wants to really anger. Having Sklyarov arrested won't undo the software he wrote, and it sure as hell won't deter any future attacks. All that Adobe has really done here is to "waken a sleeping giant and fill it with a terrible resolve." The now obsolete "Free Kevin!" will be replaced with "Fuck Adobe!" as the new motto of the movement. Let us sit back and watch the carnage, and wonder at the foolishness of it all. (discuss)
Update 20010719: (big booming voice) It has begun!
Update 20010720: Adobe sez: "This is not an issue of Adobe vs. a software hacker, but is an issue of copyright protection". I beg to differ; this is definitely going to be an issue of hackers against Adobe.
