DMCA Community Declaration

July 25th, 2001

As many of you know, a programmer has been arrested for developing a utility to circumvent copy protection schemes in some of Adobe's products. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes the practice of developing (not using, but developing!) such utilities illegal.

There is a community declaration regarding the DMCA online which has already been signed by the Debian Project Leader and SPI president as well as many other community leaders and members. This declaration states the basic problems with the DMCA, and addresses why such a law should not exist.

We urge you to go to the web site of the declaration and, if you agree with the statements regarding the DMCA, to sign it. The web site is:

http://www.dibona.com/dmca/

For more information regarding the history of this issue, please visit the following two sites:

http://www.freesklyarov.org/

http://www.boycottadobe.com/