2001 has been a most difficult year in so
many ways. History has been forever
changed by world events and the effects
will continue to trickle down on our individ-
ual lives for a very long time. Despite this,
we must look to the battles we've chosen to
embark upon with our complete attention,
despite the dramatic changes in society
which may overshadow them. Otherwise
we run the risk of giving up the battle before
we even begin to fight it.

We know that freedom of speech - even
freedom in general - is considered by an in-
creasing number to be subject to restrictive
conditions in the interests of "security."
Never mind that total security is completely
elusive. There will always be someone
claiming we can do better by closing off yet
another avenue of activity, beliefs, or
speech. And simpletons, fueled by mass me-
dia hysterics, will continue to believe it.

That's why it's never been more impor-
tant to get involved in preserving your
rights before they get signed away. Anyone
who tells you that this is somehow in oppo-
sition to the interests of our nation has an
agenda we find frighteningly disturbing.
The fact that many of these people are ex-
tremely powerful is certainly cause for con-
cern. But the real battle won't be lost until
the rest of us actually start to accept this
garbage.

We continue to fight legal battles for the
absurdly simple reason that they need to be
fought. To choose not to do this would grant
a default victory to those challenging what
we believe to be our rights. If we wait for
someone else to come along and fight the
battle in place of us (either because they
have more resources or even because they
may look more respectable than the likes of
us), we risk their not standing behind the is-
sues as much as we want them to. And we
also risk such people never coming along in
the first place.

In some ways, it's an honor to be sued.
We're basically being told to put up or shut
up, to prove our points, to actually stand up
for what we believe in. Too many times we
as individuals grow complacent. We say
what we believe but completely crumble
when someone challenges those beliefs, ei-
ther by giving in or by not defending our-
selves as well as we could. But when we are
actually sued and faced with the prospect of
losing a great deal because of what we say
and do, then we are forced to look inside
ourselves and see if we really do believe as
much as we say we do. We're happy to have
gone through that and to have come out of it
knowing that our beliefs are strong and
ready to undergo these tests. And in so do-
ing, we have found many others who feel
the same.

Although we recently lost the Second
Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the
DeCSS case, our legal team made the most
compelling argument possible. We still
strongly believe that computer source code
is speech and is entitled to all the protec-
tions that speech is normally afforded. We
still believe that the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act is a gross violator of not only
free speech but of the concept of fair use
and that it sends a chilling signal throughout
our society. We've seen professors intimi-
dated into not releasing their research be-
cause a powerful group of corporations
threatened to prosecute them under the
DMCA. Imagine being prosecuted for do-
ing research! We've seen computer users
thrown off of commercial systems and
banned from school networks for merely
being accused of possessing information
that the DMCA defines as a potential threat,
information that would have scarcely raised
an eyebrow a few years ago. And we've
seen a growing realization among our read-
ers and others that the DMCA is well on the
road to making publications like ours illegal
to print, possess, or read.

Our loss in this fight does not signal the
end. Far from it. We intend to take this case
to the Supreme Court so that our entire
court system can be given the opportunity to
correct this grievous wrong. Failing that,
other cases will be fought, among them the
Dmitry Sklyarov case which will go to trial
sometime in 2002. Although it took far too
long, basic humanity finally managed to
prevail in this case. After an unconscionable
period of being forcibly detained in the
United States for his part in writing a com-
puter program in Russia, Sklyarov was fi-
nally allowed to return home in late
December, on the condition that he return to
give testimony in the trial, which will now
focus on his company (Elcomsoft). The au-
thorities are trying to spin this to make it
seem as if Sklyarov is no longer affiliated
with his company and will be testifying
against them. In actuality he is still very
much with them and is looking forward to
telling his story at the trial. When this hap-
pens, the world will bear witness to the ab-
surdity of this law and how it's damaging
researchers and developers all around the
world. Nothing will make technological in-
novation grind to a halt faster than the con-
tinued existence of the DMCA and similar
laws in other parts of the world.

Even if it takes a hundred cases of people
challenging the DMCA, we are confident
that there is no shortage of individuals who
will proudly step forward to defend the
rights they believe in. As our leaders are so
fond of saying, we are in a war and we must
all do our part and make sacrifices. Some of
those sacrifices may be very costly. But who
among us ever really believed that the cost
of defending free speech would be cheap?

Not all the news is bad. On December
20, a federal court ruled in our favor in the
Ford case. If you recall, this was the lawsuit
that sought to prevent us from forwarding a
controversial domain (www.fuckgeneral-
motors.com) to the web page of Ford (Gen-
eral Motors' competitor) as a form of net
humor. Regardless of whether or not people
were offended by this, we felt it was ab-
solutely imperative to protect the right of
Internet users to point their domains wher-
ever they pleased. Ford felt otherwise,
claiming that what we did was somehow
trademark infringement. They firmly be-
lieved (as did much of corporate America
who had their eyes on this case) that nobody
had the right to link or forward to their site
without their explicit permission. Had we
opted not to embark upon this fight, a very
bad precedent would have been set and one
more right of speech would have been lost
because nobody cared enough to fight for it.
We are fortunate that the judge saw the fal-
lacy of Ford's arguments. It's proof that sig-
nificant victory can be achieved within the
system. Lately it's seemed as if such victo-
ries are very few and far between. All the
more reason for us to fight even harder for
them.

Of course, you won't see much in the
way of mass media coverage of this story.
Had we lost, it most likely would have been
all over the papers as another example of
hackers getting their just desserts and soci-
ety being made more secure. But the fact
that you probably didn't read about our vic-
tory in all the mainstream places doesn't
make the story any less important. It merely
underlines the growing insignificance of the
mass media itself and how replacing their
self-serving agenda is paramount to win-
ning such battles and ultimately preserving
our endangered freedoms.

It's likely to become even more difficult
to challenge the injustices that lie ahead in
the coming months and years. We'll cer-
tainly see a good deal of reprehensible op-
portunism on the part of the powers that be
as they try to tie their anti-individual agen-
das to the fight against terrorism. We must
not allow them to legitimize their dubious
positions in this manner. And we must do
our best to reach those who might not other-
wise see how they are being taken advan-
tage of. This will be our biggest challenge
for 2002.