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.
And yet some big corporations are working with P2P (Score:5, Interesting)
Certain uses of P2P technology, which involves sharing of copywrited material is indeed illegal. However, there is nothing illegal about P2P technology in and of itself.
There are large corporations out there that are working to build legitimate P2P applications [slashdot.org] for the benefit of the general public.
Where's the disconnect?
If he'd been a tenured professor (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope there's an investigation into the outside pressure:
Either there is reason for department to be audited or it shouldn't be, but the topics of discussion in the lectures should NOT be a determining factor, and his resignation should NOT change whether or not any audits proceed. The fact that his resignation changed that outcome means it's political, and as such there needs to be an investigation, so this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
Re:People are pussies. (Score:5, Interesting)
First, it would have cost the university a software audit. "Who cares?" you say. This would undoubtedly turn up something on someone's machine that was illegal, and the university would be fined. Then the university would make damn sure that this guy never worked anywhere in academia ever again.
So, if you are prepared to deal with this sort of thing, it's not a big deal. Stand up for your rights. But, unless you want to lose your job anyway and then not get hired elsewhere, it's best to resign.
Unfortunately, as previous posters have noted, that's the way it works in academia.
Pressured? (Score:3, Interesting)
Who was applying pressure to the Dean, and how? And why does giving a talk to 150 people justify this level of pressure?
It sounds more like a tinfoil hat conspiracy where the Dean had his own reasons for doing what he did, but I'm not convinced the media cartels had anything to do with it.
Two sides to this? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Obviously I had to resign to save his job (and everybody else's at the Masters Program). So I did."
Something doesn't add up here, but that depends on the alternative of not resigning. There was no real foundation for a dismissal, so he would have been shifted to a quieter role until he made a simple mistake.Re:from the faux-news dept. (Score:3, Interesting)
but the end result is NOT the same (at least in the business world). severance packages are often very different (nonexistent in firing). being allowed to resign is much better...
I love this part: (Score:2, Interesting)
So, he was never a teacher, and he only taught a few classes.
Never teacher... taught classes.
Hmm.
I teach my students to use P2P. (Score:5, Interesting)
I see it as a personal obligation to get people to use P2P, especially the ones that are scared of it. Now, I don't publicly encourage them to violate copyright in the sense that I direct them to sites like eTree and Knoppix, but I do use class time to teach them how to set up BitTorrent to work with TOR and discuss the merits of clients like Mute and GNUnet.
To me, this is just following the trend. The RIAA, MPAA and BSA are all into encouraging shools to spend more time on the topic of intellectual property so teachers should feel obliged to take them up on it and use class time to discuss these topics at length.
I think schools should spend a whole day each week doing nothing but discussing P2P and exchanging examples of the right way to share. The more time devoted to the topic, the better.
Re:Pressured? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you don't really know how much power the SGAE has here (RIAA equivalent). They, a private organization, with no publical accouting at all, got the right to collect a tax on every CD and DVD media which increased their price around 40%. I thought before that taxes could only be collected by the state, but it seems I was wrong, not to mention something called "presunción de inocencia", that's "you're innocent until proven guilty". Or you used to, at least.
That's their main way of funding, but they use many other extortion tecniques. As an example, if a band wants to play anywhere (whether it is a town's local celebrations, a bar, a local radio, even playing the damn hymn of a football club in the stadium) they force the owners of the place to pay them, EVEN when the band plays their own music - in fact, almost every free concert has to give free tickets for them to be able to know how many people did attend. Of course, there is no transparence at all on how the funds get distributed between their artists.
And, again, they're arrogant to unbelievable extremes. Always whining about the "death" of the culture, when asked about the CC licences applied to music, one of their representors did laugh at the interviewer, answering that "you'd be fool to not register your song, because I could do it and collect the money in your place".
Of course, noone does anything between the political parties. With the PP (conservative party) that canon on CD's was imposed, and PSOE got a lot of their election campaign funds from them... So the problem does not exist at all.
F***ng thieves. This country sucks a lot, really. If that was the major problem...
Re:from the faux-news dept. (Score:1, Interesting)
That would be a great point, if this guy had been a cabinet official rather than a part time teacher. The only similarity is that this guy was just as gutless as most of your high officials.
Get a fucking spine. When your pointy haired boss asks you to quietly resign, politely tell him/her to go fuck themselves, and ensure that they face a very public, very ugly termination process. Either way you are screwed, its not like you will get a reference from them at your next job, so quit/fired, has the same impact on you. The difference is the impact on them.
Trust me, if there were any actual grounds for dismissal, you would be escorted out. If they ask you, its because legally they can't get rid of you, or the optics are bad. Resigning is doing them a favour. Fuck them.
Make them waste resources documenting every pee break you take. Make them waste HR time. Make them get legal advice. Force them to offer you a huge buyout to go away. Best of all, when they put the pressure on to "make your life miserable", document it, and get your doctor to put on stress leave for a year or two. File a grievance with HR. Make a harasment claim. In the end, you will still be gone, but if they are being dinks, enjoy causing them pain all the way through the process.
Take the road you want to, but always remember, if they are asking, its because they CAN'T do it their way.
Careful! It might turn into another katie.com (Score:2, Interesting)
But anyway, I would like to point out that Spain just emerged from dictatorship to constitutional monarchy/democracy when General Franco died in 1975. That's about 30 years ago. Not really that long ago IMO, and it's not really a wonder when strong-arm tactics can still get away with lotsa things. It's not like they have really embraced democracy totally. I mean, they still have separatists movement like ETA and the Basque.. It's a turbulent brutality where money and influence speaks... and goes...
Case in point, Indonesia.. Suharto just resigned... But power structure of the ruling party's still there..
Possible flashpoint, Myanmar/Burma. The military gonna turn over power to civillian democracy.. Hah!
I have great respect for Germany and Japan. From Dictatorship to Democracy. Not perfect but I'm sure no one can say otherwise when compared to the others that I just pointed it out.
Regards!
deunan_k
(Stupid when my ISP's proxy got banned, and I can't login and post!
Re:from the faux-news dept. (Score:3, Interesting)
The next thing I'd do is consult with an employment lawyer. Then, if my lawyer advised to me resign, I probably would. However, if my lawyer pointed out that firing the entire department would
a) leave the University short of crucial teaching staff during the exam period
b) result in the biggest "unfair dismissal" employment tribunal in recent history...
there's a fairly good chance I wouldn't resign.
And if he resigned without having taken legal advice he's either very foolish, or knew he was in the wrong and isn't giving us the full story.
It's not about free speech (Score:2, Interesting)
Some Thoughts (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No, the firing is NOT legitimate (Score:4, Interesting)
Bahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh man. *wipes tear from eye* *snickler* Pmmffff. I can't help it. Bahahahahahahahahahah HA!
Universities.... sharing information and ideas....no censorship....
Bahahahahahahahaha!
Oh man. Sorry. Eh heeee! Have you ever been to a university? And even more important, have you ever been part of the faculty at one? There is a conformity and monotony of thought presence that defies description. And if you dare to not subscribe to university groupthink, you may as well resign because you're never going to get anywhere. You hold your cards close to your chest at any American university unless you are willing to completely dedicate yourself to the accepted philosophy.
It's not as bad for the students, there's a lot of heterogeneity in terms of ideas among students, but it's alarmingly absent in faculty, and those who express political, social, or philosophical ideas outside of the accepted thinking are run out of town. And god forbid you say anything publically, they'll be demanding your resignation for "embarassing" the university with your extremist views.
Note: this is not a neocon rant about leftists in school. You can express leftist ideas that aren't the right leftist ideas and still get blasted. One of the great ironies of American academia is that the people running it are probably among the most markedly anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian as educated people can be, and yet they fiercely defend the power heirarchy in place. It's unreal.
Re:This time they've gone too far. (Score:2, Interesting)
What this cartel are doing DOES justify theft/piracy/whatever-they-choose-to-label-it of the goods from which they are leeching their wealth and power.
I'll go farther and say that anyone on the side of liberty and freedom should feel morally OBLIGED not to give another cent to these snakes.
Either that, or it's rifle time.
Re:Nice Spin (Score:1, Interesting)
For CS students (Score:5, Interesting)
I know the class below me at Edinburgh Uni had a project which involved writing thier own P2P app.
P2P Apps are a great learning experience in socket programming, distributed systems, threading and many other skills that do transfer into other areas.
However if this stuff doesn't relate to your major then i fail to see why it should be taught. Regardless of how paradigm-shifting some people think p2p is - it's just a new way to use an old technology. And unless you study CS, Law, or some relevant social science then it's not what you (or your government) are paying for you to go to uni for.
I tried a slightly different approach (Score:5, Interesting)
"Mr. Highgate, is sharing music files on the Internet wrong?"
"Well, students, it's illegal. And, according to the recording industry of America, it takes money away from recording artists."
"Yes, but is it wrong?"
"Let me tell you about the business practices of the recording industry . .
"Is it wrong?" I concluded. "Well, student's, that's a moral decision you'll have to make on your own. This is a civics class. All I'm going to tell you is that it's not legal, and you'd be insanely stupid to do it using the school's computers."
Though if anyone in the administration told me not to discuss this topic, I would probably comply. Just because I don't like the RIAA doesn't mean I'd be willing to martyr myself for it.
Contract non renewal (Score:3, Interesting)
A nice clean agreable break isn't a bad thing.
Re:from the faux-news dept. (Score:4, Interesting)
- A CNN VP
- News Producers/Executive Producers at (at least) two of the major networks
- Various well-known journalists at the national level
- Various local well-known journalists (who I met years before I moved into this area)
If some employer tried to screw me like that, you can bet the excrement would hit the oscillating unit, if you know what I mean. If you don't have at least phone numbers of two or three reporters somewhere at your disposal... well, you're probably normal.Re:Techinical Point (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, we should be very concerned about the allegations. If true they represent a serious breach of academic freedom. If the researcher is crying wolf, then, deservedly, his career is at an end.
It's a bit curious though. If we take his story at face value, he resigned rather than face the various nasty things a hostile dean could do to his life. On the other hand, he clearly means to fight this, otherwise why stir up the hornet's nest? It must therefore be the case that his resignation was tactical in nature. This would mean, depending on which conclusion you wish to jump to, one of two things. Either he felt that fighting it through administrative channels would leave him vulnerable to being painted him as somebody who is griping about the normal committee gruntwork of being an untenured prof. Alternatively, he is fabricating this to conver his unwillingness to do his duties.
It's also possible that both parties are wrong: the dean violated academic freedom, but this was the last straw in a pattern of misbehaving.
Re:Um (Score:5, Interesting)
I was just reading an old Chronicle article yesterday about a similar case. (Threw it away afterwards, so I can't give you details since I've forgotten.) The university decided to get rid of two tenured professors by doing pretty much what you said- remove all their classes, get rid of their office, etc, even if they weren't fired.
The end result after a settlement- the professors won't be there anymore, but they're going to get paid for the rest of the time to their retirement. The faculty senate had a unanimous no confidence vote for the president and administration over the issue, followed by an overwhelming no confidence vote from the full faculty. The president is very unlikely to be there next year.
Tenure's not a perfect shield, but administrators mess with it at their own risk.
Re:Um (Score:2, Interesting)
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."
Who are, in turn, the agents of the people who write and record the songs. It's how songwriters and composers get paid for the use of their works and is the same the world over. Yeah, there's a bit of "double dipping" going on, because the radio stations are also paying to broadcast the music in the first place.
"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."
Yeah, this is the same the world over as well. Resista los parásitos, amigo.
KFG
Re:To make the lecture worth it... (Score:4, Interesting)
They get a fee from the authors as their legal representants and also get fees from the customer who would like to use these rights. Finally they get a percentage of the IP earnings (of record sales and repertoire use in broadcasts and live shows). A big byte of the IP income belongs to 'unknown authors': this means that as long as the author is not there to be paid for his/her IP it's the SGAE which cashes this money. I can remember that the percentage was near 3-10% of the total amount, which is a lot of money anyway, tens of thausands of Euro-bucks which go into no-one-knows who's pockets. So that every foreign artist which sells music in Spain or is being braodcast in the Spanish media will not see a cent if her record company doesn't has an agreement with the SGAE. This counts for almost any smaller indy or single artist as we are normally talking about bulk agreements with big US companies. There have already been two cases of the German record industry against the SGAE (the weirdness has no end, sorry for your brains). To keep it simple: They get money from all and every IP transaction related to music, theater and other media which occurs inside the Spanish territory. And they also has subsidiaries in South America and the USA...
The blank-media 'tax' is indeed a fee for permitting the private copy of IPed stuff, the result is divided among the SGAE itself and the companies with which they have an agreement. As it is indeed a tax on IP, there are also evading payment of all those whose IP is being used and are 'unknown' to the SGAE. This not only involves musicians, but also the software industry in all its forms, from Free Software, where users have to pay for the media to burn an ISO of her favorite distro, to propietary software as they are also charging for the media used to store backup copies and data.
It's very very difficult to try to explain to a stranger how this madhouse really works and why those guys are doing their will instead of being in jail.
If you are wondering why we Spaniards aren't storming the streets armed to the teeth right now and shooting those bastard politicians and lobbysts back to hell, the only thing I can tell you is "me too"...
And Internet Driving Licence?
Nop, I wasn't joking at all, here's the link: Spanish: P. Farré demands the end of intenet anonymity [elsemanaldigital.com]
This guys is the second-in-charge in the SGAE, a really smart guy, as you can imagine, who seems to think the internet only exists in Spain.
Re:I tried a slightly different approach (Score:5, Interesting)
Certainly not, providing you have the permission of the copyright owner to do so.
Only after their next question (presumed to be, "what if you don't have that permission?"), do you then get into the 40 minute talk on the state of the mainstream music industry. You could even point out to the musically inclined that it doesn't have to be that way - that they have the right and power to control their creations unless they sign them away to a delegatee of the Big 5.
Structuring the topic that way changes the conversation quite a bit.
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Interesting)
Your argument is based on the context of a highly intolerant patriarchal society, and culturally-ingrained views about the proper role of a woman. Based on your comment that women who want money should marry a rich man, I'd almost have thought you a troll. Marrying for financial security, societal status, etc. are all the same as prostitution, but the woman surrenders her independance as well as her body, which is the key distinguishing factor that makes the practice acceptable in a traditionally patriarchal society.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Interesting)
I more or less agree that even when legalized it's "bad", and does hurt the prostitute, but only on average. I'm sure there are prostitutes that enjoy (or at least aren't bothered by) their work, and who suffer no psychological trauma from it. But that's essentially true of most "unpleasant" professions. Generally speaking, people who work those jobs have few choices, but some may not mind it.
Re:This time they've gone too far. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's my exact point. You're not going to convince people that something needs to change by simply fulfilling your every whim and operating as if the law simply didn't exist. You know, other people who had important issues found sensible non-violent ways of bringing them to attention, and they changed the world!
Martin Luthor King Jr, and Mohatma Ghandi would protest this issue by organizing boycotts of RIAA bands, by starting up letter-writing campaigns, by organizing debates. Not by just CD after CD with free music because "hey, civil disobedience, man!"
Sure, there are SOME people on Slashdot who don't agree with the copyright laws and are willing to DO SOMETHING to fight them. But the vast majority, I think, are simply freeloading the free music and movies and don't give a crap about artist's rights.
(For the record, I personally think that current copyright laws are very sensible, I'm just commenting on this "movement" from an outsider's perspective.)