Software vs the state

[capr]

I hear about things like these maybe once a week, so I thought I'd make a list, because it's easy to forget.

2001 - Dmitry Sklyarov, a russian citizen, was jailed in US for 6 months for breaking the DMCA because Adobe (then under Bruce Chizen) didn't like his DEF CON Talk "eBook's Security – Theory and Practice". In a cowardly hit-and-run move, Adobe quickly withdrew its complaint to avoid bad press, knowing full-well that the US prosecutors (then under Robert Mueller) would have no reason to do the same.

2011 - Aaron Swartz (reddit cofounder) was charged with 2 counts of wire fraud and 11 counts of breaking the CFAA (totaling up to 35 years in prison) for trying to scrape JSTOR (a paywalled academic library) using an MIT-provided account. He hanged himself in 2013.