A 19-year-old University of Chicago student accused of leaking the secrets of DirectTV's most advanced anti-piracy technology to hacker websites has agreed to plead guilty to violating the rarely used 1996 Economic Espionage Act. Igor Serebryany is scheduled to appear Monday in federal court in Los Angeles to enter a guilty plea, as part of a plea agreement reached between defense attorneys and prosecutors last week, lawyers for both sides confirmed Wednesday. The plea deal does not stipulate a sentence, which will be governed by federal guidelines, according to the prosecutor in the case.
Passed to meet the perceived threat of foreign espionage against American companies, the Economic Espionage Act carries harsh penalties for stealing trade secrets for personal financial gain, or for a third party's economic benefit. For the first five years of its existence the law could only be used with approval from the Justice Department in Washington -- a limitation that was lifted in March, 2002. Unlike most defendants charged under the act, Serebryany is not accused of having a personal financial motive -- the student was not himself a satellite TV pirate, and he gave the secrets away for free. Even with a plea agreement in place, that the powerful law was leveled against the teen doesn't sit well with Serebryany's defense lawyers. "We have some problems with the fact that this was filed," says Kiana Sloan-Hillier, one of Serebryany's attorneys. "Clearly, it was not [meant] to be used carelessly."
"It's the crime of stealing trade secrets, so it's properly used when trade secrets are stolen," counters prosecutor James Spertus. "I imagine most people who steal get paid for it, or somehow profit by it... but it's the theft that's the crime. There's no more appropriate statute to use in this case."
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Passed to meet the perceived threat of foreign espionage against American companies, the Economic Espionage Act carries harsh penalties for stealing trade secrets for personal financial gain, or for a third party's economic benefit. For the first five years of its existence the law could only be used with approval from the Justice Department in Washington -- a limitation that was lifted in March, 2002. Unlike most defendants charged under the act, Serebryany is not accused of having a personal financial motive -- the student was not himself a satellite TV pirate, and he gave the secrets away for free. Even with a plea agreement in place, that the powerful law was leveled against the teen doesn't sit well with Serebryany's defense lawyers. "We have some problems with the fact that this was filed," says Kiana Sloan-Hillier, one of Serebryany's attorneys. "Clearly, it was not [meant] to be used carelessly."
"It's the crime of stealing trade secrets, so it's properly used when trade secrets are stolen," counters prosecutor James Spertus. "I imagine most people who steal get paid for it, or somehow profit by it... but it's the theft that's the crime. There's no more appropriate statute to use in this case."
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0.6:
- bumped component version, pre-0.6 components no longer load
- fixed time-display-on-seek-while-paused
- added new statusbar options
- improved speed of database operations
- redesigned database, default config no longer permanently stores info, you need to configure it to get albumlist stuff to work
- added new DSP helper classes in SDK
- added reset button on titleformatting page, resets only one of strings
- improved diskwriter & replaygain, they no longer block main window
- added $rgb(), $progress2(), $transition()
- added new playlist format (.fpl)
- fixed rare crash with querying for currently selected file
- added configurable file info reading logic
- "restrict added files" now affects more actions
- ported dithering routines from SSRC with tweaked parameters; dithered output is no longer bit-identical to source lossless format
- added one-time reminder in foo_out_ks
- added file type recognition based on mime
- switched internal data format from 32bit floatingpoint to 64bit floatingpoint
- VBR extrainfo on MP3 files is back, more reliable now
- changed API for archiver support, now much nicer to work with, shared code handles boring tasks such as file path parsing
- added user profile support
- new mp3 seeking code, slower but sample-exact
- added full file buffering option
- increased size of preferences window
- positions of playlist search and file info box are now remembered if "remember window position" is enabled
- added "sort only selection" in playlist
- moved diskwriter to a separate dll
- added command to reset total playback time counter
- following Xiph's recommendations, Ogg files containing garbage at the beginning no longer play
- vorbis streaming should now update title on track change
- updated Vorbis decoder to latest CVS
- various config options now use dropdown lists
- reverted to old "remove duplicates" code, faster with big playlists
- made infobox font configurable
- %_ispaused%, $rand()
- added startup console messages about dlls that failed to load
- metadb_handle technology ?
- reduced playlist memory usage (uses metadb_handle instead of storing file paths)
- improved speed of various playlist-related operations
- added VOC input, thanks to kode54
- more resampler options (older machines dont like new 64bit resampling)
- foo_dsp_extra now compiled with ICL7.1 (meh, it doesn't make any difference on my new XP2200+)
- fixed some problems with cue input
- more %__codec% fields with various formats
- user-friendly KS output device names, thanks to kode54
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