[Promotum] A victory for freedom

[Edmund A. Hintz]

So, some of you might remember me ranting and raving over the arrest and 
prosecution of Dmitry Sklyarov. The Dept. of (In)Justice has reached an 
agreement with Dmitry. There were many articles written about it, but 
basically the charges have been suspended, and his employer, Elcomsoft, 
has taken over the role of lead defendant. The agreement requires Dmitry 
to appear in court as requested for either the prosecution or defense, 
but if he does so the DOJ will drop charges at the end of the Elcomsoft 
case. Essentially, this means Dmitry and his family can go home to 
Russia, and he can simply fly out for court dates as needed, and he is no 
longer subject to criminal prosecution and imprisonment. So, it's a 
victory of sorts, although the repeal of the DMCA still stands before us.

Anyway, this evening (19 Dec), the EFF held a "Dmitry Freed" party in SF; 
various persons spoke, and I'm proud to say Dmitry named me personally in 
his thank you speech. You can hear it on MP3 here:

http://radio.eff.org/radio_shows/Dmitry_Victory.mp3

Oh, and because I'm completely nuts, I caught a 10 pm showing of FOTR 
afterwards. Here's my comments on that:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/12/19/53218/657/52#52

Being that it's now 3:30am and I've just about lost the adrenaline rush 
from FOTR, I'm singing off now. Cheers.


Peace,

Edmund A. Hintz              **|**     "You may say I'm a dreamer,
Mac Techie, Unix Geek,      *  |  *      But I'm not the only one...
Mac/Unix Consultant        *  /|\  *     I hope someday you'll join us,
<ed@hintz.org>              */ | \*      And the world will live as one.
'78 Westy                    *****      Imagine."
                     http://www.hintz.org