ElcomSoft employee Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested in July 2001 for simply talking about his company’s software, which could be used to remove the copy protection from Adobe eBooks. Today, a thankfully-sane jury found ElcomSoft not guilty. Here’s the one of more interesting parts of the News.com article (emphasis mine):
After much wrangling among attorneys over the definition of the word “willful”, the judge told jurors that in order to find the company guilty, they must agree that company representatives knew their actions were illegal and intended to violate the law. Merely offering a product that could violate copyrights was not enough to warrant a conviction, the jury instructions said.
Hopefully this provide a small amount of momentum against the draconian aspects of the DMCA. Shame on Adobe for forcing customers to have to crack their digital media just so they can make a backup or take it on a plane with them. News.com story | News.com: DMCA critics say reform still needed | Boing Boing | Dan Gillmor: Copyright verdict, new technology are reasons to hope