A federal judge has released Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian programmer arrested under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act at the request of Adobe.

The Department of Justice keeps hold of Sklyarov's passport, and his employer has met the $50,000 bail. A hearing is scheduled for August 23.

There was no indication that the DoJ will drop the case, although Adobe withdrew its support for the criminal complaint against Sklyarov two weeks ago. The programmer was actually arrested for selling software, Advanced eBook Processor that breaches the DMCA, although ElcomSoft has now agreed not to distribute the software in the US. Which might not count for much, as it's threatened to release it under a GNU GPL licence.

Sklyarov is the first programmer to be arrested under a criminal prosecution using the DMCA. His arrest has prompted world wide protest, and widespread confusion amongst sub-editors: we're not the only folk to have difficulty spelling his name ®