'Free Dmitri' campaign takes case of hacker to US embassy

NEWS Protesters are planning a demonstration this Friday to call for the release of Adobe hacker Dmitri Sklyarov. It is taking place outside the US Embassy in London. The Russian programmer was arrested by the FBI at the Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas in July on charges of writing software to bypass US copyright law. Adobe originally accused Sklyarov of breaking the copyright of its eBook Reader but withdrew the charges soon after the company faced opposition from geeks around the world. Sklyarov's fate is now in the hands of state prosecutors. Protesters complain that the arrest was unlawful and unnecessary. They claim he should not have been charged with "trafficing in a copyright circumvention mechanism" because he did not sell the software himself. They further claim that the law under which he has been charged is not applicable in Russia. 'Free Dmitri' protests are planned to take place in 25 cities worldwide. The UK demonstration starts at 1.00pm Friday 3 August. For more information click here: http://www.xenoclast.org/freesklyarov/