Allan Dyer
I have previously commented on laws that fail to connect with the reality of Information Security and which are therefore "bad". The case of Dmitry Sklyarov and the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is also in this category. The DMCA outlaws the sale of copyright protection circumvention technology. Sklyarov, a Russian, was arrested when visiting the USA to present a paper on flaws in the Adobe Systems's eBook Reader at the DefCon conference.
This is a complex case, with issues of jurisdiction (Sklyarov worked in Russia, where there is no similar law) and constitutional rights (does the DMCA restrict Fair Use rights?) but it has already had a detrimental effect. A Dutch researcher, Niels Ferguson, has decided not to publish his paper detailing security weaknesses in the HDCP content protection system because of fear of prosecution when he visits the USA. Therefore, the weaknesses are unlikely to be fixed before HDCP comes into common use, and criminals will have an easier task of pirating the supposedly protected works.
The parable of The Emperor With No Clothes illustrates the value of truth - nowadays, the truthful boy would find himself in an American jail for 25 years.