Sklyarov and Elcomsoft each enter a not-guitly plea - At this morning's appearance at the US District Court in San Jose, CA, Dimitry Sklyarov and Vladimir Katalov (on behalf of Elcomsoft) both entered not guilty pleas on five counts of violation of the DMCA.

The short appearance was attended mostly by press and well-wishers for Dimitry. Judge Richard Seaborg read the charges and maximum sentences - totalling about 25 years in prison and around $2 million each in fines, while an interpreter translated into Russian. Sklyarov and Katalov entered their pleas in English.

Their next appearance is set for September 4.

[editor's note, by erik] EFF Press Release. Greg Broiles writes on the free-sklyarov mailing list that the presiding judge of the next hearing, Ronald Whyte, does have a track record of technology cases:
Judge Whyte is not unfamiliar with technology and the Internet - he was the judge who ruled, in RTC v. Netcom, that Netcom could potentially be held liable for contributory copyright infringement when one of their downstream customers used their network access to violate the Church of Scientology's copyright; he also presides over the Sun v. Microsoft suit concerning Microsoft's license to use Sun's Java source code and trademark; and he presided over Ebay v. Bidder's Edge, where he ruled that Bidder's Edge's spidering of Ebay's auction site, over Ebay's objections (in English and via robots.txt), was a trespass and subject to a preliminary injuction.

RTC is the Co$-operated "Religous Technology Center". The case is documented here (search for Netcom / Whyte). Anyone care to read the relevant docs and post a summary?