I’ll be keeping these installments coming over the course of the day.
Next installment – the Prosecution’s cross on Vladimir Katalov, Alexander Katalov’s testimony and the testimony from the RegNow! employee (Today – Saturday). The Final Arguments Synopsis will go up tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon sometime.
That’s the plan stan!
The Jury is taking the weekend and Monday to consider the evidence further.
I’m going to blog a Wired News story about it in a second.
I’ve had a power outage the last few hours, so I was unable to post my latest ElcomSoft Trial update, which I will post in a minute.
I’ve decided to go through this stuff in the order that it took place, rather than jumping ahead and discussing the Final Arguments. If I’m lucky, the Jury won’t come up with a decision till Monday, and I can string you along all weekend as I catch up on my notes up until the end of the Final Arguments. And then we can all hear the verdict on Monday morning and it will all be so dramatic.
If we get a verdict today, it will undoubtedly affect my telling of the story. (So that’s just another reason I hope we don’t get a verdict today.)
I also hope that the Jury is really thinking about these issues, and is taking as much time necessary before hopefully coming to the right decision.
So here’s the rest of Dmitry Sklyarov’s testimony, and then I’ll move on to the other witnesses for the Defense (Vladimir Katalov, Alexander Katalov and an employee from RegNow!).
Here’s my next round of notes from the ElcomSoft trial.
I haven’t heard anything yet about a decision from the Jury.
You’ll know as soon as I do!
“If I was an unscrupulous student, would I be able to use the AEBPR program to make copies (of the course materials) and give them to the other members of the class?”
“Yes.” Dmitry replied. “But it would be illegal to distribute them. You would be distributing them yourself. The program doesn’t do it.”
Dmitry volunteered that an unscrupulous student could also open up the Ebook and take screen grabs of its pages and distribute them, or even print the pages out and make copies of them, and distribute those, illegally, to everyone in the class, if one were so inclined.
Frewing made a point of having Dmitry clarify that it would probably be cheaper and take less time for the unscrupulous student to spend the $99 on the AEBPR program and email them to do students from his home than to perform any of the other options Dmitry had mentioned.
“Yes.” Dmitry conceded. “It might be cheaper.”
This is just a little informational post to let those interested know that I just got back from the last day of the trial and I’ll have a brief synopsis of the day’s events up soon (within the hour) before getting back to finishing up my extended coverage.
(update: 3:00pm. I’m fried guys. I was up till 2am editing my Trent Lott Daily Show piece, and then I had to be in court this morning at 8:00 am. So I am fr-ied!)
The Jury is planning to deliberate today and tomorrow morning — so we might have a verdict before I “get there” with my narrative account of it — but I’m trying to catch up!
Next update late tonight or early am. Juicy stuff!
Then I will go back and finish the long versions of the witness cross-examinations. Promise.
I’m hoping to get another installment up tonight…but it might not be till early morning.
The final argument is in San Jose at 8:00 am, so it’s most likely I’ll be posting well into the weekend on this thing. Hopefully the Jury will take its time deliberating on the evidence and not make any hasty decisions on Thursday afternoon. I’ll keep you posted.
“I still believe that it is absolutely legal,” he said.
“I’d like to rephrase the question. When you developed the program, you thought it was lawful. Correct?” Burton asked.
“Correct,” said Dmitry.
“And up until July 16, 2001, you thought it was lawful?” Burton asked.
“Correct,” said Dmitry.
“What were the reasons you thought it was lawful?” Burton asked.
“The initial idea was taken from the Internet. It had been around for years,” Dmitry said.
“Between the time you developed the program and July 16, 2001, did anyone ever tell you that the AEBPR was unlawful?” Burton asked.
“No.” Dmitry said.
Here’s my next installment from the ElcomSoft trial. My next post will be tomorrow in the AM.
When we last left our story, our hero (Dmitry Sklyarov) is being questioned on the witness stand by ElcomSoft defense attorney Joseph Burton (perhaps the real hero), as a video excerpt of Dmitry’s July 2001 Def Con presentation is being presented to the Jury…
“One of the things you were trying to do was to demonstrate weaknesses?” said Burton.
“Yes,” replied Sklyarov. “Many companies say the Ebooks are copyproofed. But most of the ones I have seen are not secure and can be easily compromised. The program I developed demonstrates such security flaws.”
“We are trying to show that E-book distribution on Adobe’s Technology is insecure,” he said. “We are not trying to hurt publishers.”
“By ‘publishers’, who do you mean?” said Burton.
“I mean copyright holders,” Sklyarov said. “Companies that use those (security technologies) can lose money, and that’s not fair,” said Sklyarov. “The public has a right to know.”
Court wrapped up early today. Both sides have presented all of their evidence and examined and cross-examined each other’s witnesses.
Tomorrow will be a day off to let the Judge finalize the Jury instructions (which the Judge explained could not be prepared properly until all of the evidence was heard) and to let both sides prepare for their final arguments, which will be taking place Thursday morning at 8:00 am.
I expect to be writing up yesterday and today’s events for the next 24 hours or so.
I’ll keep posting them here in 1,000 word incriments.
Here’s a little courtroom artwork to tide you over till the next one.
That’s the “Jury” on the left and “Reporter” (meaning the court reporter) on the right.
My First Impressions of the Trial
Sketch by Lisa Rein
I had a really interesting day in court Monday observing the U.S. vs. ElcomSoft trial.
Dmitry Sklyarov was cross-examined by both sides and Vladimir Katalov had just taken the stand for a bit when it was time for court to adjourn.
I’ll be posting more this evening before heading over to the big EFF party tonight.
See you there!
All in all I’d say the Jury was probably just trying to keep up with the conversation more than anything else — which did get rather confusing from time to time in the context of all of the products, technologies and acronyms flying around.
Even I had to look at the big chart provided by the defense showing the two products being discussed side by side — the APDFPR (Adobe PDF Password Recovery program) and AEBPR (Adobe Ebook Password Recovery program) — every so often in order to keep it clear in my mind which one they were talking about as they switched back and forth. And I’ve been familiar with the case for over a year — so I can’t imagine what it would be like for a juror to try to stomach all of this stuff in a couple of sittings.
One thing about the jury though: they sure looked interested in what was going on. They were paying close attention and were taking everything very seriously — yet they were also quick to laugh when things were, well, just plain funny.