DefCon hacker free as a bird

Dmitri Skylyarov, the Russian hacker who became a global cause célèbre when he was arrested at last month's DefCon developers convention, was a free man last night after a San Jose court granted him bail.

Skylyarov was pounced on at the Las Vegas event by the FBI agents and charged with violating US copyright law, the first such arrest under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Software-maker Adobe accused Skylyarov of allowing people to get past copyright protection within its eBook Reader, a technology the company developed to market books in digital form.

The Russian hacker was released yesterday on a $50,000 bail and is due back in court on 23 August. If found guilty of copyright violation he faces a $500,000 fine and up to five years in jail.

Skylarov's arrest sparked demonstrations around the world as developers saw his incarceration as an affront to their freedom to tinker with code.

Some of the demonstrations were more confrontational that others. The 20 or so techies who took to the American Embassy in London last Friday were outnumbered by police.

The police it turned out where not even there to keep the developers in check, rather to control an entirely separate Palestinian protest.