Contact:
Roman Kazan Email: roman@escape.com Tel: (212) 888-8780 ext. 888 April 28, 2000 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
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Internet Service Provider claims victory over major Hollywood movie studios (Universal City Studios, Inc.; Paramount Pictures Corporation; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.; Tristar Pictures, Inc.; Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.; Time Warner Entertainment Co., L.P.; Disney Enterprises, Inc.; and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation ) who have sued him for operating a controversial website featuring a DVD decryption formula (DeCSS). In fact, the site has been owned, created and operated by one of thousands of Escape.com subscribers. Unfortunately, the plaintiffs chose to ignore that crucial fact moving quickly to a lawsuit accompanied by a heavy media campaign during which Kazan has been unjustly named "a hacker, theif, pirate, trafficking of an unauthorized utility, providing the keys to the castle or department store" by the MPAA, plaintiffs and in several press and newswire articles. On March 17, 2000 the studios and Kazan signed a consent order which finally recognizes Kazan as an ISP who is not directly responsible for content published by his customers. There are two major issues surrounding the case: the extent to which an ISP is liable for contents published by his subscribers and the ignorance of movie studios who have neglected Kazan's willingness to lead them to the person who posted the DVD decryption formula. From the very beginning of all legal proceedings against him, Kazan has been surprised by the course of action undertaken by the movie studios. He has made several attempts to explain to the Plaintiffs' attorneys that ISPs are not able to control information posted on subscribers' websites. Kazan, has also provided the Plaintiffs with the full name of the person who owned and operated the website Krackdown.com. Despite that crucial evidence, the case againts Kazan ended up in court while the press campaign continued defaming Kazan's name. "There is absolutely no excuse for such a heinous mistake to have been made: for naming me as the owner and operator of KRACKDOWN.COM. Proskauer Rose (law firm representing the movie studios) did indeed visit ESCAPE.COM on 01/09/2000, 01/12/2000 and on 01/13/2000," says Roman Kazan. During all these visits, the attorneys obviously realized that Kazan was merely running an Internet Service Provider which provides domain web hosting and Internet access. Kazan, frustrated by the manner in which the studios attacked him directly and challenged the freedom of Internet has discovered the hypocrisy behind the plaintiffs actions. "I spent roughly 15 minutes searching for DeCSS via search engines to see if I can find it on America Online, a division of Time Warner (plaintiff). After some quick searches I stumbled upon http://hometown.aol.com/**CENSORED**index.html which has not a link but a copy of DeCSS. This site is ran under AMERICA ONLINE's domain name (www.aol.com) and its servers" reports Kazan. "Obviously, it is not AOL who is operating this webpage; it is a customer of theirs. America Online who now owns the media company Time Warner was indirectly suing me for something that they have been themselves doing!". Important Links Regarding This Issue: Server Access logs of Proskauer visiting Escape.com and what they did... All of the pages Proskauer viewed on Escape.com. Server Access logs of Proskauer visiting Krackdown.com and what they did... Server Access logs of MPAA visiting Krackdown.com and what they did... Server Logs of Proskauer checking domain name availability... |