<< back to table of contents
Contact: Roman Kazan
Email: roman@escape.com
Tel: (212) 888-8780 ext. 888

April 28, 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Major Hollywood Movie Studios Withdraw From A Lawsuit Against A New York Based ISP
After a short court battle, Roman Kazan, the owner and operator of Escape.com, a New York based
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...