Jurisdiction, culture, and the least resistance

This Tech Talk column originally appeared in The Exponent (University of Alabama in Huntsville), Vol. 33, No. 2 (August 30, 2001). Digitized issue: UAH LOUIS archive. Reproduced here courtesy of that archive.

Assuming that language barriers weren’t a problem, would you still live in America? Even between English-speaking countries (please forgive the Anglo-centrism), there are many differences in culture, economy, and, most notably, law. Is it an accident that you live here, or are there reasons that motivate you to stay? American women, although not quite as liberated as their Russian sisters, probably wouldn’t even consider living in Arab or Hindu nations because of the way women are treated in those places. Liberty loving Americans wouldn’t be able to stomach Australia because there are no explicit protections of free speech or the right to keep and bear arms.

Even if living in America is a result of the path of least resistance, would you like it if a country punished you for something you did here in America? For instance, a few years ago, an author named Salman Rushdie was given a death sentence in absentia for writing a book called The Satanic Verses that is critical of Islam. Granted, Rushdie would have been incredibly stupid to visit a country with a significant Muslim population, but does that make his death sentence just? Another example: should Americans vacationing in China be subject to penalties for having more than one child? What about American gun owners who take a trip (without their weapons) to England, where private gun ownership is illegal?

Most people would agree that these actions would be wrong, but it would be hypocritical of Americans to make that judgment. Recently, a Russian cryptographer named Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested in Las Vegas for violating an American law, the unspeakably bad Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Sklyarov works for a company called Elcomsoft that makes a product that allows blind people to translate from Adobe’s “secure” eBook format to Portable Document Format, thus allowing them to read the books by opening them with reader software that scans the text and synthesizes it through the computer’s speakers. (Think of it as a high-tech version of “Books On Tape”.)

The DMCA outlaws creation, possession, or use of software designed to circumvent copyright protection mechanisms. The eBook format is comically insecure (despite marketing claims to the contrary), and Sklyarov’s sin was exploiting the weakness to create software that would perform the translation. Regardless of the fact that he wrote the software outside American borders, he remains in the United States on $50,000 bond with his passport confiscated by the Department of Justice.

Ulysses S. Grant once wrote, “I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.” In the case of the DMCA, it seems almost certain that stringent execution is what it will take for people to realize what an awful piece of legislation it really is. Adobe’s complaints against Sklyarov would be like you or I whining about someone stealing CDs from our cars, even though we left the doors unlocked and the windows down. As Microsoft, Adobe, and other software companies are learning, bad laws can’t make up for the deficiencies in their bad software.