Advocates of free speech on the Internet have asked federal prosecutors in the US to release a Russian programmer being transported to San Jose, California, to face criminal charges of violating copyright laws.
Mr Dmitry Sklyarov (26) was transferred yesterday from the Las Vegas jail where he had been held since his July 16th arrest.
Lawyers and other representatives of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) met for about an hour with officials from the US Attorney's office in San Francisco, asking that they drop the case against Mr Sklyarov.
"The public is outraged," said Mr Robin Gross, an attorney for EFF. "It's creating a huge international incident between the US and Russian governments, " he continued.
Federal prosecutors did not indicate whether they would continue to pursue the case, Mr Gross said. An official from the US Attorney's office declined to comment on the meeting.
The case is the first prosecution brought under the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bans the creation or distribution of technology that can be used to circumvent copyright protection.
Sklyarov wrote a program that allows people who purchase books in digital form and use Adobe Systems’ eBook Reader to make copies of the book, as well as transfer it to other computers.
The Russian does not deny writing the program and even gave a presentation on it at the recent Defcon hackers' convention in Las Vegas, the largest of its kind in the world, just before he was arrested.
Critics charge that the new copyright law, which took effect last year, violates the free speech rights of the US Constitution. They also claim the law eliminates online fair-use provisions of established copyright law that allow people to use material for educational and artistic purposes.