Teacher Fired for P2P Lecture 749
An anonymous reader writes "A teacher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, was forced to resign after a talk about P2P networks. You can read his side of the story on his blog." From the article: "The day before the conference, the Dean (pressured by the Spanish Recording Industry Association 'Promusicae' as I found out later, and he recognized himself in a quote to the national newspaper El Pais, and even the Motion Picture Association of America, as another newspaper quotes) tried to stop it by denying permission to use the scheduled venue. So I scheduled a second one, and that was denied again. And a third time. Finally I gave the conference on the university cafeteria, for 5 hours, in front of 150 people." Commentary on this story at BoingBoing as well.
Techinical Point (Score:3, Informative)
Moneyed interests (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
It's not, and it was never suggested that it was. What was suggested was that his lecture was so disliked by individuals in power, because they don't want people to get the idea that P2P systems have legitimate uses, that he was coerced into resigning. The penalty for not resigning would have been a total crackdown on his entire department. He chose to resign to save the department that pain. And in return for that "favor", his 5 years of teaching is not even being recognized.
and why was he forbidden in the first place?
See above. The university administration, under coercion by the Spanish Recording Industry Association and the MPAA (I think-- I didn't quite understand that bit), didn't want the population at large to see that P2P is a valid and legal tool, as that would damage their fight against piracy.
Mods: "he resigned, not fired" == troll (Score:5, Informative)
Mods, please mark "Troll" to anyone who posts anything like:
"He's a wuss, he backed down and quit."
or
"He resigned, he didn't get fired. TFA != Story Title"
Half-truth: He resigned.
Complete truth: He was forced to resign, and denounced by the university. The university said, "he only taught a few classes," when he'd been teaching full-time for 5 years!
This is BS, and censorship at its worst. I'm working on becoming a Computer Science professor, and this article makes me glad I don't live in Spain. Does anyone remember this [slashdot.org] from a few weeks ago? The RIAA wants just as much control over U.S. universities as the Spanish equivalent already has over theirs.
But he WAS fired, stop saying he "resigned" (Score:1, Informative)
The choice bears great similarity to the choices given to political targets in totalitarian regimes. "commit suicide by your choice or be tortured to death publically".
It doesn't matter that he decided to resign under pressure, he would have been tossed out by security the day after had he refused.
Re:from the faux-news dept. (Score:5, Informative)
Freedom of speech in Spain (Score:5, Informative)
Politicians here sometimes sue members of the public for slander or libel. The last president did it (aznar). I like the UK, where you can happily calll tony blair a liar and not worry he's going to try to sue you for it!
See it by yourself (Score:5, Informative)
You can see some photos of the people here [polinux.upv.es] .
Re:To make the lecture worth it... (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is that as a result he's got a real lot of publicity. And now he is on tour like a rock-star, LOL.
The situation is Spain is somewhat different as in the rest of the world:
We have a monster called SGAE:
It's kinda mixture of trade union, governmental department and private enterprise (?), which acts as a lobby group for EMI-Odeon Spain, as an obligatory trade-union (authors must pay fees to them so that they can see a cent from their IP), does music production as a private enterprise (it's partly responsible for the infamous "Latin Grammies"), fights against piracy, pirates copyrighted stuff from the spanish Wikipedia and at the same time runs an online music store, lobbys for non-related stuff such as an internet driving license and gets fees for public broadcast of public television and music bands which are not members of the SGAE.
MPAA should be concerned, as those guys also get payd for the IP of "unknown" artists, this means anybody which is potentially non-spaniard.
Now they are even getting money from a blank media 'tax' (30% of a CD or DVD's price), a 'tax' which is paid even by the Spanish administration itself (!)
So, we Spaniards can be cosidered a dumb bunch, but in matters of robbery and piracy those guys are Number One.
Re:Um (Score:3, Informative)
And if they do something that is not leagally wrong, but pisses off any possible source of funding for the university, then what? They get pulled into a quiet room and told all would be best if they left the university. Then they "resign", but it's tenamount to firing.
Umm, no. At least here in the US, if the professor has tenure they say "Fuck you" and go directly to the faculty senate to stir up some shit. If the university tries to actually get rid of them chances are the faculty will call a no confidence vote that will probably cost the president her job.
If they don't have tenure they may have some more problems, but they'll still be going to the faculty senate. You've never seen a bunch of academics get in a snit I bet- it's an ugly sight. We've had major arguments in faculty meetings here because faculty were told to lock their campus mailboxes- I don't even want to think what it would be like to fire someone over an issue of "allowed" research.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Um (Score:3, Informative)
And those taxpayers are not specially fond of the SGAE / Promiscae, as they fees us for buying bunrable CD's for storing our pictures and also fees bars and the like for having a TV set, radio or HiFi equipment. Even when the spanish TV stations are either public or earns their income from publicity We are paying IP for TV Commarcials!
And the funniest of all this is that it's not the
TV stations which receive the money, nor the publicists, it's SGAE themselves.
The University we are talking about is also famouse for it's 'infamous' Dean, because of his engagement in nationalistic-linguistical discussions (Valencià vs. Català) and because of serving as a base for a particular nationalist group related to left-wing activities. So, it's not a very popular guy among he's colleagues.
So it's easy to understand that Cortell is now being invited to dozens of conferences in universities such as the UPM, one of Spains top-notch unis. Some of those conferences with RMS and Marcelo D'Elia Branco.
The Important Fact(TM): Spanish public opinion, even at a very basic non-geek level is clearly against SGAE and it's clones, it's the guy-from-the-street and the teenage school girl which are afected by the taxes and the bullying against P2P (a legal act, as far as we pay taxes for this). They perhaps don't know about the details, but they know for sure they are being robbed. JC could become a real media-star if things develop further in the direction of SGAE doing stupid moves.
One Thing I Forgot: The people at the SGAE are not specially smart, the are real *assholes* who could let Dubya seem intelligent. So people are much more upset as it would have been if they behaved like real loobyist instead of playing Bozo the clown.
Stay tuned, the war has just begun.
Re:Freedom of speech in Spain (Score:3, Informative)
Um, actually, there are very few countries in the EU with any guaranteed freedom of expression. Certainly not the UK or Ireland anyway.
The difference is usually that public figures can't be bothered taking libel suits against normal plebs, simply because a) it's so expensive, and b) the plebs don't have a whole lot of influence.
It's quite amusing to hear local scumbags being arrested asking for their 'Miranda' rights (they've seen too many US TV shows !) - rights they don't have in this country !
Re:Um (Score:5, Informative)
Second, most new professors are years away from tenure.
Now, even for tenured professors at US schools, tenure isn't quite the shield you describe. For instance, if the professor is in a profit-center department (otherwise known as biology, computer science, or one of the other funded areas), if the professor isn't pulling in sufficient grants, the university can put them in a broom-closet like space where it's unlikely that they'll have the lab facilities to put together successful proposals (in biology, for instance, you usually need to have done most of the research before putting in funding -- grants are that competitive and agencies that risk averse).
Now, let's say that being put in a broom closet isn't bad enough. The university can get rid of tenured professors by eliminating the department.
Here's an example (not of retribution against tenured professsors, but simply of how a department closing can lead to selective firing of tenured professors). In 1990, Brandeis University had a linguistics department with 6 faculty, and I believe all six had tenure. The university decided to close the department to save money (at the time, the school was eating its endowment, not just interest on the money).
The university then made offers to 3 of the 6 professors (including Ray Jackendoff) to join other departments.
Effectively, 3 tenured professors were fired.
--Pat
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
"Driving License" (Score:3, Informative)
( We seem to be getting somewhere, in Norway at least "Datakortet" - the "Computer Card" - can be obtained using Linux
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
You seem to be under the impression that P2P software is illegal. It is not. The teacher was giving a demonstration of and a lecture on the legality of P2P networks. It was this subject that meant his lecture was prevented three times.
I agree it would be good to read a response from the University, hopefully we will get one. However, you should have at least read his story - he wasn't endorsing illegal activity - he was presenting an argument that P2P networking was legal (and he is right, actually).
Re:Freedom of speech in Spain (Score:3, Informative)
You and I can call Blair a liar all we want and it won't do much to affect his reputation. Almost by definition, in order to defame someone what you say must have an effect, and British judges are quick to take the fact that there are differences in what effect different people and different forms of media will have when considering a defamantion lawsuit.
Besides, if Tony Blair sued, there's always the possibility that the judge would write a very pointed judgement that would be extremely politically embarassing. I guess that, if anything, is what makes British politicans careful about suing - they know perfectly well that a significant faction in the judiciary here considers it their duty to kick politicans in the groin as hard as possible metaphorically speaking whenever politicians try to use lawsuits to do their dirty deeds. Vidar
Re:This time they've gone too far. (Score:3, Informative)