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WASHINGTON -- In an effort to derail protests planned for next week, Adobe representatives have agreed to meet with a civil liberties group to discuss the case of a Russian programmer charged with illegally bypassing the company's copy protection methods.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said on Friday that its representatives would sit down with Adobe lawyers and engineers at a mini-summit scheduled for Monday morning. The EFF has taken up the cause of Dmitry Sklyarov, who was arrested this week on charges of violating the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
This would be the second known prosecution under the criminal sections of the controversial DMCA which took effect last year and makes it a crime to "manufacture" products that circumvent copy protection safeguards.
An Adobe spokeswoman said the meeting, which will be held at the company's offices in San Jose, California, will be "a mutual frank discussion about some of these issues." Adobe pressured the U.S. government to bring charges against Sklyarov, according to court documents.
The agreement was enough to prompt the EFF -- which had been a central information source for protests scheduled Monday against Adobe and the Justice Department -- to abruptly cancel the demonstrations.
"EFF has decided to put the July 23 protest on hold," said a message from EFF's Will Doherty. "Please help us act in good faith and postpone the protest until we have a chance to negotiate with Adobe."
It didn't work.
By Friday afternoon, grassroots organizers on the free-Sklyarov mailing list had already planned at least a dozen events in cities across the United States. And the groups had approximately as much momentum as a very angry rhinoceros who has finally glimpsed his target.
Not one organizer backed down.
"I'm sorry, but you don't cave in a situation like this; if we're protesting with media coverage, that's all the more leverage we have in negotiations," said one activist. Another advised: "Will: You can't negotiate with Adobe to get the guy out of jail. Get the federal prosecutor to the table, and then we'll talk about forestalling the protests."
Shari Steele, EFF executive director, said co-founder John Gilmore contacted Adobe on Friday morning. She said the software maker agreed to meet if EFF wrote a letter that said it was not representing Sklyarov and that agreed to call off the protests.
"They said you do what you can to cancel the protests," Steele said.
Both Adobe and the EFF refused to release the letter.
Even if Adobe has a surprising change of heart, the U.S. Attorney for Northern California would need to be convinced to drop the charges. He happens to be Robert Mueller, President Bush's pick announced earlier this month to succeed Louis Freeh as FBI director.
Activists from the hacker-zine 2600 magazine tried unsuccessfully to talk their way into a press conference Friday where John Ashcroft was speaking at Verisign in Mountain View, California.
After getting booted from the room, they waited outside and distributed copies of an EFF letter to Ashcroft on this case.
"Once we got kicked off their property, we hung out on either side of the only driveway, handing them to reporters as they left," says 2600's Macki. "All in all, very successful."
The outcry among programmers and security analysts doesn't seem to have hurt Adobe's stock price. It closed Friday at $40.69, which is where it was when the week began.
