"We didn't agree with the laws in place," he said. "It was an act of civil disobedience of a mild sort."

While Gabriel did remove the files, he said he still objects to the DMCA and added that Harvard should not have made a decision until rulings were made in the New York and California cases.

"This is something still up for grabs, and still out in the courts...it was premature of Harvard to jump on the side of big business and ignore the issue of consumer rights," Gabriel said.

Ryan, however, said that the preliminary injunction seemed a clear indication from the courts that distributing DeCSS is illegal.

"When congress passed the DMCA, they said, in effect, that it is unlawful to post the utility that is designed circumvent copyright protection," Ryan said. "If there had been no court decision on that, we'd have to figure out if [DeCSS] does or doesn't violate the law on our own. But there was a clear ruling from the courts that said this violates the act."

Ryan added that Harvard was responsible for maintaining the legality of anything available through its servers.

"We have to take a stance on requiring people who use our system follow the law," he said. "We're responsible for what's on the system."