Partly in an attempt to protect the interests of publishers, the U.S. Congress in 1998 enacted national copyright laws called the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (DMCA). Among other things, this legislation (Public Law 105-304) makes it a crime to circumvent security controls in DRM-secured content.. . .
Partly in an attempt to protect the interests of publishers, the U.S. Congress in 1998 enacted national copyright laws called the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (DMCA). Among other things, this legislation (Public Law 105-304) makes it a crime to circumvent security controls in DRM-secured content.

In a July 15, 2001 presentation at the Def Con 9 security conference (), Dmitry Sklyarov presented the results of his Ph.D. research analyzing Adobe's DRM security system for protecting PDF files. But before departing for his native Russia, Sklyarov became the first person to be arrested for criminal violation of the DMCA.

Social, economic, and moral analyses of the DMCA and Sklyarov's case are to be found elsewhere (for instance, see This article describes the techniques Sklyarov used to defeat portions of Adobe's DRM security for PDF files. All technical details herein were gleaned entirely from Sklyarov's presentation. Via their attorneys, Sklyarov and representatives from ElcomSoft (his employer; https://www.elcomsoft.com/ declined to comment. No attempt has been made to verify the correctness or applicability of these techniques. Any errors herein may represent my failure to understand Sklyarov's presentation, rather than shortcomings in his original presentation.

The link for this article located at Dr. Dobbs Journal is no longer available.