DMCA Stupidity: Sklyarov Denied US Visa; RedHat Can't Tell You What They've Done

Stupidity

from the catch-22 dept

Dmitry Sklyarov, who was made famous for being arrested for violating the DMCA with his ebook reader software for ElcomSoft is trying to come back to the US to testify in the case. After being held in jail for quite some time, a deal was worked out that let him go home, and let ElcomSoft, the company, face the charges instead of Sklyarov, the individual programmer. However, now that he’s planning to return to testify in the case, the US has denied him a visa. As the Register points out, he is “legally unable to enter the States to attend a trial he is legally obliged to testify in.” Meanwhile, the Register is also reporting that Red Hat may have released a security patch but if you (like me) live in the US you’re not even allowed to know about it. Just knowing about it might violate the DMCA. Instead, the rest of the world knows about a security vulnerability that those of us in the US can’t patch because even knowing about it would be a federal crime. That DMCA is quite a useful law, huh?