Techies sing to free jailbird hacker

A strong-willed handful of techies gathered together outside the US embassy in London this afternoon, hell bent on freeing Russian software developer Dmitri Sklyarov.

Sklyarov was arrested at the recent DefCon event in America for allegedly creating a method of bypassing copyright protection used in Adobe's electronic book format.

His incarceration has been seen as a personal affront to the freedom of the developer community, and a co-ordinated series of protests has been taking place around the world.

But if the heavy police presence at the US embassy were expecting a riot this afternoon, they were disappointed. (Indeed, rumour has it they were there to keep watch over a protest by some Palestinians, which was due to kick off later in the day).

In the true spirit of peaceful political protests, the 20 or so techies campaigning against the incarceration of Sklyarov arrived only for a good sing a long.

Armed with a guitar, they berated the heavy-handed approach of the Digital Millennium Code Act, or DMCA - the US copyright law under which Sklyarov is being held - to the tune of Village People's YMCA.

This was followed by a quick sketch satirising his arrest, with the whole event turning into a rather surreal imitation of a Friday night in a Christian youth club.

But what Sklyarov's UK supporters lacked in riotous behaviour, they certainly made up for in commitment.

One of the organisers of the event, Dan Ackroyd, a designer with computer games firm Intelligent Games, said the crowd was not only concerned about Sklyarov's imprisonment, but also about the legislation behind it.

"People are here for different reasons. For Dmitri, but also because they don't like the idea of the DMCA and the implications it has for software," he said.

While the UK currently has no legislation to equal the Digital Millennium Code Act, hackers can be prosecuted under the 1988 copyright law, although Ackroyd explains this is rarely enforced.

The European parliament is currently debating a copyright directive that could include similar powers to the DMCA, but Ackroyd said he hoped the high profile Sklyarov case will highlight faults in the law and encourage the EU to reconsider its plans.

Theodore Hong, a Phd student in computing at Imperial College, said he was worried about how laws like the DMCA affected his profession.

"Laws like this should be aimed at people who misuse software, not those who create it. It disturbs me that I could get arrested for writing a program," he said.

Anton Chterenlikht, a mechanical engineer and former college mate of Sklyarov from the University of Moscow, travelled all the way from Sheffield for the event.

Summing up the crowd's feelings he said: "The FBI are embarrassed now but they can't admit they are wrong."