Chaos theory - internet style: A 24-year-old Russian computing student attends a hacking conference in Las Vegas to speak about software security. Before he takes to the lectern, the FBI step in, slap on the cuffs and accuse him of publishing a piece of software that contravenes US law. They whisk him away, throw him in jail, refuse bail and threaten him with a five-year stretch and a $500,000 fine.
The hacking communities were stunned and their reaction was swift. Within days, a number of vigils began appearing outside US embassies around the world.
Then, the company who reported him to the FBI, frightened of backlash, changed its mind and admitted that, actually, they'd rather not have him banged up in the State Penitentiary thank you very much. "Too late", say the Feds.
The Dmitry Sklyarov affair reveals the increasingly widespread power that big business holds over the US courts. Sklyarov was detained after Adobe, one of the world's biggest software companies, complained that he had helped write a program which contravened copyright protection on one of its products.
The software in question is Adobe's eBook reader, which allows users to buy electronic copies of books and read them on their computers. To protect the copyright of e-book publishers, the software does not allow for the books to be copied or sent to other computers. Sklyarov is accused of helping design a computer program that disabled the eBook reader.
It didn't seem to matter to Adobe or the FBI, that Sklyarov was a foreign national who has not breached any law in his own country, Russia. However, both Adobe and the FBI argued that you could by it on the internet for $99 and was therefore in breach of US law.
In the latest twist, Sklyarov has agreed to co-operate with the United States in its ongoing prosecution of his former employer, the Moscow-based software company, Elcomsoft. It's a sad turn of events, but for Sklyarov, it seems to be the only way of staying out of the jail in which he spent the last five months.
Elcomsoft says that all it is guilty of is spotting a gap in the market and argues that people who buy protected e-books could reasonably want to make back-up copies or transfer them to the hard disc of a new computer. Adobe's protection system makes that impossible.
The main issue though, is not the cracked bit of software that few people are ever likely to use, but something called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) - a piece of legislation aimed at protecting intellectual copyright. Under the act, it is a criminal offence to create a technology that undermines copyright protection mechanisms on products as diverse as Microsoft Windows or a Madonna DVD.
To its critics - and there are a lot of them - the DMCA is a particularly draconian act. Not only does it severely affect an individuals right to alter their own software, it also outlaws scientific research into copy-protection technology.
Many people believe it would have been better for Adobe to heed Sklyarov's warning. After all, he appeared at the conference to argue that copyright protection on software was too weak.
Cyber-libertarians have little reason to cheer at his release. Just around the corner is The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), the so-called 'son of DMCA' that, if passed, will make it a civil offence to create or sell any kind of computer equipment that "does not include and utilise certified security technologies" approved by the federal government.
It also creates a new felony, punishable by five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000, for anyone who distributes copyrighted material with "security measures" disabled or merely has a network-attached computer that disables copy protection.
And if you think these acts are not enforceable, just ask Dmitri Skylarov.
