Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and his Moscow-based employer, Elcomsoft, have been charged with breaking controversial US copyright laws.

The 26-year-old programmer was arrested last month shortly after presenting a paper to a conference on the encryption methods used to protect electronic books.

Mr Sklyarov has been indicted on five charges and if found guilty on all of them could face up to 25 years in jail.

The cause of the programmer has been taken up by freedom of speech advocates and cyber libertarians who are planning demonstrations to protest against his arrest and indictment.

Copyright controversy

Mr Sklyarov, who is free on $50,000 bail but must remain in northern California, was formally charged on Wednesday with violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Mr Sklyarov is the first person to be charged under the DMCA, which took effect last year.

The Act makes it a crime to distribute tools that can be used to circumvent copyright controls on digital products such as electronic books, encrypted music files and DVDs.

On 16 July FBI agents arrested Mr Sklyarov, who had travelled to the US for a technical conference at which he was to present a paper on the encryption methods some companies have chosen to protect online works.