Hacker History: Dmitry and the DMCA

Presented at Kiwicon 6: The Con of the Beast (2012), Nov. 18, 2012, 4:15 p.m. (15 minutes).

Last year, one of the iPhone talks tabled the question "who's heard of Elcomsoft", and maybe 1/3rd of those present responded. Given Elcomsoft's prominent role in the trials and lamentations of Dmitry Skylarov at the conclusion of Defcon 9, and the subsequent furor in the hacker/code-is-speech crowd, it rather shocked me that few seemed to be aware of this. Main focus are the issues with Dmitry's arrest and the abuse of the DMCA by Adobe (will likely touch on the issues with the DMCA and code-as-speech assuming time permits, but it's not the primary issue).

Presenters:

• Ed Hintz
  Hung around since the days of Apple II, BBS's, telnet, and gopher. First gained NZ notoriety as "The tcpdump guy" at NZNOG 04. Was rather heavily involved from day 1 in the Free Dmitry movement at the time, and shared a few homebrews with Alex Katalov and Dmitry in celebration of his release from charges. Been there, done that, got the tshirt and photos.

Links:

• https://2012.kiwicon.org/the-con/talks/#e54

Similar Presentations:

• The Last HOPE (2008) / A Decade Under the DMCA
• DEF CON 12 (2004) / DMCA, Then and Now
• DEF CON 10 (2002) / Dmitry Sklyarov and the DMCA: 12 Months Later