CyberBabble
Site-Seeing on the Internet

The Summer Of Disharmonic Convergence

Duff MacDonald
Mirror contributing writer

   The Age of Aquarius seems like just a quaint hippie catch phrase spun off from the musical “Hair” (www.geocities.com/hairpages), but some sort of harmonic (or maybe disharmonic) convergence seems to be taking place right before our eyes as we stare at our monitors endlessly surfing the Internet. The Net may seem completely unrelated to real life, especially to those on the other side of the Digital Divide, but that’s a very naïve assumption.
   I don’t mean to inadvertently encourage those xenophobic anti-government militias, but I feel like unfurling the “original goods” colonial flag of Christopher Gadsden: “Don’t Tread On Me” (www.usflag.org/gadsden.html). The spoon-feeding of information by Adobe Systems to the FBI to persuade agents to arrest someone who, they feared, would dent their bottom line is an ominous development Microsoft’s Windows XP’s habit of keeping track of what you download and install on your computer and concluding you’ve changed too many things and must get permission from Big Daddy Bill Gates to make YOUR computer fully functional again is downright Orwellian. And, silly me, I was mad that Apple now requires you proffer an email address to download software updates. Give ‘em a fake addy!
   Adobe Systems, Inc. (a U.S. corporation) has rendered ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. (a Russian Corporation) impotent. The Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, who created the algorithms for ElcomSoft’s software, the Advanced eBook Processor (AEBPR) was released on bail and is scheduled to have a pretrial hearing tomorrow, August 23.
   The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) (www.eff.org/alerts/20010808_eff_sklyarov
_alert.html) has a page with contact names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses along with sample letters. Stand up for your rights as an American and help Sklyarov, who has become the test case scapegoat for the enforcement of the heinous and unconstitutional Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
   As the EFF points out in its Sklyarov Action Alert, the guy who’s calling the shots in this offense on our civil rights is none than our U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. Sklyarov is at the top of the list of the Department of Justice’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) Web site (www.usdoj.gov:80/criminal/cybercrime/
ipcases.htm). If you think that this is only an Internet issue or is only of concern to hard-core computer geeks, you better think again. We are treading on new turf, which, while focused on software code and programming, is at bottom about freedom of speech and more specifically what constitutes speech and expression.
   If you surf over to the ElcomSoft page (www.elcomsoft.com/aebpr.html) for its AEBPR software, you are dutifully told that it is no longer available. This software was designed to point out the flaws in Adobe’s eBook Reader security code, as well as allow individuals who had legally purchased an eBook to convert the file into a regular Adobe Acrobat Reader PDF file. That’s the only way to make a backup copy of your eBook purchase. You cannot do anything with the software unless you’ve bought an eBook.
   The right of consumers to make a copy of something they own has already been established in our courts. Making a copy of something is referred to as “time and place shifting.” We as consumers can decide when it is more advantageous for us to use something in a different place or different time than that dictated by a corporation. But still the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is claiming that it’s not “fair use” for us to make a cassette tape of a CD we own to listen to in the car.
   This is a rerun of the battle (www.hrrc.org/html/betamax.html) that was won in favor of Sony’s Betamax and consumers. Of course, VHS is now king in the U.S., but isn’t VCRs, video rental stores, and blank videotape already legal everywhere? If you follow the corporate circular logic far enough, you realize that they want us to pay them for products, but THEY want to retain ownership. Paying Microsoft for the forthcoming Windows XP apparently won’t mean you own it.
   In an effort to inject some sanity into this sea of delusion, I offer this up, but first I must state First Amendment protection and refer Adobe to the California Anti-SLAPP Project (CASP) (www.casp.net/intro.html). SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, which are corporations’ way of impeding freedom of speech. Cryptome (cryptome.org), that defender of truth, liberty, and the American way, has mirrored ElcomSoft’s original site containing the now banned in the U.S.A. AEBPR software. The file is Windows for 95/98/ME/NT 4.0/2000/XP and is compressed; click on this link to download (cryptome.org/aebpr/aebpr22.zip). This is the trial version, which only converts 25% of an eBook file, but here are the “alleged” instructions on modifying your Windows Registry (use Notepad) and the “alleged” key to make the full version (cryptome.org/usa-v-sklyarov. htm).
   Email CyberBabble: duffmacdonald@yahoo.com