To whom it may concern at the MPAA,

On February 4, I received a message from you that, in summary, said that my 
web page was hosting a device ('DeCSS') that you claim is illegal, and as such
you had various demands that you wished me to comply with.  

I am sorry for not responding earlier, however, your mail to me was initially 
rerouted to my "spam folder" by my automated SPAM filtering mechanism (which I
only check infrequently).  In future I would recommend that you not send me 
messages that only contain empty message bodies (with the exception of 
attatchments) or subjects that contain only capital letters.

Unfortunately, I'm sure many of the other people you are likely to contact on 
this matter will, like me, see this request for what it is.  It is an 
over-extrapolation from a singular biased point of view that does not fairly 
consider all the facts at hand.  I have several counter points that I feel I
must expand upon.

  (1) In your letter you claim that: 

  "DeCSS is a software utility that decrypts or unscrambles the contents of 
  DVDs (consisting of copyrighted motion pictures) or otherwise circumvents 
  the protection afforded by the Contents Scramble System (CSS) and permits 
  the copying of the DVD contents and/or any portion thereof.  As such, DeCSS 
  is an unlawful circumvention device within the meaning of 17 U.S.C. 
  1201(a)(2),(3)."  

  This reasoning does not hold since the courts have not yet ruled on whether
  or not DeCSS is an unlawful circumvention device.  I am not interested in 
  the arguments of MPAA lawyers, or representatives if they have not been 
  backed up by rulings in the court of law.

  (2) As is known, the copying of software, media, and so on is legal for 
  backup and archival purposes, and by extensions so are the tools that enable 
  this, regardless of their addition potential for use in an illegal manner.  

  Other tools such as "DVD-rip" (In the article at 
  http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-01/lw-01-dvd-interview.html you 
  will find Jon Johansen's explanation of the existence of DVD-rip.), which 
  has been available for much longer than DeCSS, also appear to provide the 
  same function, though your side has clearly been very delinquent in not 
  pursing similar action against that tool.  As such I believe your attempt to 
  label DeCSS, and only DeCSS as *the* tool for the sole purpose of pirating 
  DVDs as something that will also be held against you in the courts.

  As such I believe your case to be weak, and do not believe you will prevail. 
  Similarly, I also believe that the existence of this tool for back-up and 
  archival purposes, as well as the original intent of using it as a research 
  base upon which a DVD playing mechanism can be created (for obscure or 
  unsupported platforms such as "Linux") makes the existence and dissemination 
  of this tool legal.

  (3) In your letter you have cited the January 20 court ruling:

  "Posting on any Internet web site, or in any other way manufacturing, 
  importing or offering to the public, providing, or otherwise trafficking in 
  DeCSS, and (b) posting on any Internet web site, or in any other way 
  manufacturing, importing or offering to the public, providing, or otherwise 
  trafficking in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part 
  thereof, that:  (i) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of 
  circumventing, or circumvention the protection afforded by, CSS, or any 
  other technological measure that effectively controls access to plaintiffs’ 
  copyrighted works or effectively protects the plaintiffs’ rights to control 
  whether an end user can reproduce, manufacture, adapt, publicly perform 
  and/or distribute unauthorized copies of their copyrighted works or portions 
  thereof..."

  However this citation fails to mention that this ruling was targetted at the
  following individuals:  "Defendants Shawn C. Reimerdes, Eric Corley a/k/a 
  'Emmanuel Goldstein' and Roman Kazan, their officers, agents, servants, 
  employees and attorneys and all persons in active concert or participation 
  with them who receive actual notice of this order by personal service or 
  otherwise be and they hereby are enjoined and restrained, pending the 
  hearing and final determination of this action"

  Not only is there no evidence of any contact between Shawn C. Reimerdes, 
  Eric Corley a/k/a "Emmanuel Goldstein", Roman Kazan et al, and myself, I 
  hereby declare that I am not in active concert or participation with them.  
  My sources to this information came from elsewhere.  Linking to any of them 
  cannot be considered "participation with them" since I am unaware of their
  web site activities as they are similar unaware of mine and there is no 
  expectation on either side either explicit or implied about each other's 
  actions.  I have never exchanged email with any of the people named here on
  the topic of 'DeCSS'.

  Thus there is insufficient basis from which you can conclude that this court
  injunction might apply to me.

  (4) I find that Part 3 (c) of this injunction is overbearing and thusly 
  mistaken:

  "'DeCSS' means any computer program, file or device that may be used to 
  decrypt or unscramble the contents of DVDs that are protected, or otherwise 
  to circumvent the protection afforded, by CSS and that permits the copying 
  of the contents or any portion thereof."

  Unfortunately, my legitimately acquired software DVD player (the InterVideo 
  WinDVD DVD player) is a device that can (by pressing a button called "play") 
  take the scrambled content of a DVD, internally descramble it and copy its 
  unencrypted contents (or selected portions called "chapters") to my screen 
  in the form of a real time video playback.

  It is my belief that it was not the court's intent to prevent legitimate DVD
  owners from being able to privately play them on their own DVD players 
  regardless of their relationship with 'DeCSS'.  As such I believe their 
  injunction contains a mistake, which may by itself be cause for overturning 
  this injunction at a later date.

  (5) Your demand:

  "1) take appropriate steps to cause immediate removal of DeCSS from the 
  above identified URL, along with such other actions as may be necessary or 
  appropriate to suspend this illegal activity;"

  is impossible to completely comply with, since I cannot perform any action 
  that will suspend this illegal activity, if by that you mean either the 
  piracy of DVD material (which I believe is illegal), or the redistribution 
  of DeCSS (which I do not believe is illegal, even I should assume that that
  is what you meant.)

  (6) Your demand:

  "3) advise us of the name and physical address of the person operating this 
  site; ... "

  is not substantiated by any court rulings thus far.  That said, it is not
  difficult to obtain that information yourself (it is publically available
  from domain name registrars), and therefore I am confused by this request.

  (7) Your demand:

  "4) maintain, and take whatever steps are necessary to prevent the 
  destruction of, all records, including electronic records, in your 
  possession or control respecting this URL, account holder or subscriber."

  is extremely overbearing.  While I am the owner and maintainer of the site,
  I could not request that my ISP delete all records of activity on this web
  page, nor could I expect other sites which link to mine, or search engines 
  to stop linking or caching my page or any materials obtained from it.

  The only way I could "take whatever steps are necessary ..." is probably to
  hire my own lawyer to represent me and enforce your will upon all these 
  other entities.  I don't consider it reasonable for you to enforce a
  financial and time consuming burden upon me.  As such I consider this 
  request completely flawed.

Given these points, you will have to agree with me that I am not motivated to 
simply comply to your demands.  Your demands 1), and 4), are completely 
unworkable as I see it, so even if I were to want to comply with your demands 
regardless of my assessment of your email I could at best try to comply with 
the second and third demands.  Since I am the account holder for this site, I 
can consider myself to be informed.  Since I am writing to you, I can also 
consider myself to have contacted you.  Thus compliance with 2) has occurred 
regardless of the fact that I don't concurr with your line of reasoning 
presented in your document.  Demand 3) is just plain silly.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say that I don't harbor any mal
intent on the motion picture industry.  I understand that the act of piracy is
illegal, and I sincerely hope that the DVD industry is not destroyed by the
existence of 'DeCSS'.  The desire to stop piracy is something I can 
appreciate.  However, "fair use" is something that I also appreciate.  CSS is
clearly an attempt to stop both piracy and "fair use", thus I simply cannot
support its use.

I understand that there have been legal rulings on this matter.  As such I 
understand this to be a serious matter.  However, I don't believe that your 
letter and the demands contained therein is in line with these rulings.  This 
sounds like the point of view of the prosecution (which is irrelevant to me) 
rather than the point of view of the court (which, as an American citizen, I 
will respect).  If you wish to clarify your position (and I encourage you to 
do so, since I consider this to be a serious matter) please do not hesitate to 
contact me again.

Sincerely,
Paul Hsieh