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David Irving writes to
Emory University lawyers, March 22, 2004 Key West, Florida, Monday, March 22, 2004 Dear Mr Beck, Thank you for your response to my démarche about the egregious violation by Lipstadt and her university, Emory, of my copyrights. I again request that you identify to me the ISP hosting Lipstadt's odious website. That you have so far failed to do so may be regarded as evidence of an unclean conscience in the affair. You are at liberty of course to make your own representations to the ISP, but if you wish to encourage them to continue to violate my rights they do so at their own risk. I would ask that you then show them the contents of this letter. May I at once disabuse you of certain misapprehensions. It would be wrong to assume that I propose to seek relief against Lipstadt or Emory in the U.S. courts, since your clients' malfeasance occurs in the global Internet, and I can choose to pursue the matter in any jurisdiction where their tortious publication of my copyrighted materials takes place. Please refer to the recent libel action, Joseph Gutnick vs. Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal in Australia. Secondly, you assume that it will be sufficient for you to plead that, since I am in your belief a pauper, I am not to be allowed to defend my intellectual property rights against infringement by a wealthy university; otherwise you would not have threatened me with an application for security for costs. This kind of cowardly argument is unlikely to impress a properly constituted Court in the U.K., if it should come to that. It will be equally scornful of your suggestion that Lipstadt and Emory have acquired the right to publish without my consent hundreds of pages of my private documents, without commentary, as "fair use" or "fair dealing" -- with the provisions of which concepts I am quite familiar; let alone the right to post scores of pages of my private diaries on the Internet by virtue of their being (in your eyes) "immoral or scandalous, injurious to public life, public health and safety or the administration of justice or which incite or encourage others to act in a way contrary to public life, health, safety or the administration of justice." (The street-wise phrase, "Get real," springs instantly to mind.) Finally, the financial state to which you refer in your second point will determine on March 5 of next year, 2005, with my automatic discharge, and if your clients are foolish enough not to have ceased and desisted from violating my rights even then, they will have only themselves to blame when the damages awarded against them are consequently that much greater. I await therefore by return of mail*: (a) the identity of the ISP hosting the website complained of; and (b) an undertaking that your clients' wilful violation of my rights will cease forthwith. Yours sincerely,
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