Teacher Fired for P2P Lecture

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.

I don't get it

I just don't get it. Why should talking about P2P networks be considered illegal, and why was he forbidden in the first place? Of course, after being forbidden once, he should have fought with the authorities and argued his case until he got permission, not ignored them and gone on to speak.

Re:I don't get it

Why should talking about P2P networks be considered illegal...

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.

This time they've gone too far.

Just exactly why should I be buying music and movies and other such content from low-life snakes who pull stunts like this?

This guy goes out to talk about the legal uses of P2P networks, and the recording industry gets him fired. How exactly do they expect to convince people to buy their products rather than downloading them, if they do this sort of thing?

Re:This time they've gone too far.

Why should you buy it? Well, don't, but if you want to posess it, you have to cough up the cash.

What they are doing is down-right vile, but disagreeing with corporate practices doesn't justify theft (obtaining something without proper payment).

They don't have to convince anyone of anything, because they are the legal owners of the content. And since that content is by no means essential to your life in any way shape or form, they can control it as they like.

Don't like how someone does business? Don't like their tactics? Boycott, get others to boycott... Protest... Write angry letters about it... whatever, but you can't really use it as a justification for theft.

I think the University in this case is a lot more at fault, because the industry could try and pressure or threaten audits or whatever, but they should have stood up to it. If I was in the administration I would have recorded every bit of communication with the industry groups and would have said "You even TRY to nail us for exercising our academic freedoms, this will go out all over every major media outlet and we'll make sure to take you to court over it"

Which just goes to show that...

nobody expects the Spanish (Recording Industry Association) inquisition!

Re:Which just goes to show that...

Better yet...

so I scheduled a second one, and that was denied again. And a third time.

...that one burnt down, fell over, then sank into the swamp...But the fourth one stayed up, and that's what your gonna get lad.

--AC

And yet some big corporations are working with P2P

What I find unbelievable is this whole "P2P is illegal" thing.

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?

All this talk about not being fired...

IANAL, but in most countries if you are forced into a position where you feel incorrectly pressured to resign, and you do resign, that is still grounds for an unfair dismissal case. He was effectively fired by the comments that were presented to him.

However, I do agree with some people that it would have been a clearer argument if he waited longer for the situation to develop more and made proper recordings of phone calls "discussing his problematic situation".

Mods: "he resigned, not fired" == troll

I can't believe how quickly these creatures have crawled from beneath the bridges and translated their near-unintelligble grunts to paper.
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.

I teach my students to use P2P.

I only teach part-time, but I definitely make use of class time to push P2P on the students and tell them that it is their responsibility to get out there and share as much as they can. I find the students are eager to discuss the issue.
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.

The point here is that he was CENSORED

Whether he resigned or was fired, or was pressured to resign is another matter. He was censored in his own university, for God's sake!

Spain != U.S.

*sigh*

There's a lot of comments here about how he should have gotten tenure, spoke to a union, in the U.S pressured resignation == firing, in the U.S. pressured resignation != firing, etc. How about someone from Spain actually chiming in? Is there a tenure system in Spanish universities? Teacher's union?

Freedom of speech in Spain

I live in Spain. It's generally pretty cool, but one thing I really don't like about it is that there isn't the freedom of speech here that there is in the rest of Europe.

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!

Re:from the faux-news dept.

Your comment is pointless. When high officials in most governments (cabinet members of the US administration, for example) are fired, they always legally 'resign'. The whole point of his blog posting, if you had bothered to read it, is that he was pressured to the point where he had to 'resign' - ie. he was fired.

Re:from the faux-news dept.

His lecture wasn't denied twice, and if he was fired over it he'd have an open and shut wrongful termination suit, assuming that they have such a thing in Spain. His *request for a venue* was denied twice. So he gave the lecture in a place where he didn't have to ask for permission. As a trivial example, you get turned down twice trying to reserve a school field for your baseball game. So you have it at the next door park instead, where you don't have to ask.

No, the firing is NOT legitimate

Just because it is _predictable_ does not make it legitimate. If he worked for Transglobal Conglomerates, the firing would be perfectly legit.

The proud history of universities is that they are supposed to be places for the sharing of information, not places for censorship. A university is generally considered to be part of a public trust of information, unlike a privately held for profit corporation. The charter of a university is usually not-for-profit and to spread and increase knowledge.

Good universities have professors who say scandalous things and - if they are well thought out - keep their jobs (usually unless they are personally attacking more senior faculty). By going ahead and getting forced to resign, I believe he did exactly what he intended - proved his university isn't interested in education and doesn't deserve to exist. (Unless of course they come back and remedy it)

Furthermore it is part of the mandate of a professor to do things like this - they are supposed to be making the world a better place, and they have a burden to that - the same way a doctor is supposed to help people even if they work for a corporation. They have BOTH responsibilities.

Um

Welcome to Academia. That's how you fire people here.

Re:Um

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.
-nB

Re:Techinical Point

He wasn't fired. He (claims he) was pressurised into resigning. I ain't making any judgement or saying anything else until I've heard an account of events from someone less close to the controversy.

I'm quite certain that "having his contents confined under a pressure greater than that of the outside atmosphere" was not his reason for resigning.

Being pressured, however, may have have had something to do with it.

- The Word Police

Re:Both sides?

The fact that a university would try to stop such a lecture is beyond the pale. These are supposed to be institutions of academic freedom, not shills for the recording industry. It's a dark day for academia when cowardly administrators pull stunts like this.

Re:People are pussies.

Easier said than done.

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.

Re:To make the lecture worth it...

But as far as we can tell, he didn't. He needed a "trackerless" lecture system.

Re:Two points:

A university isn't the same as a business. The notion of academic freedom is central to a university, and the fact that a group of record companies could pressure a dean in this way shows that these guys have taken upon themselves far too much power. It was wrong, it was a violation of the notions of academic freedom, and I think the time is coming when we better sit down and figure out just how much power we want RIAA and its clones elsewhere in the world to have.

Better yet

Could someone host his p2p lecture as worldwide video conferencing thing? I quite interested in what it all was about

Relase it via bittorrent. Nothing like using a P2P network to prove the point.

Re:Resigned != Fired

Surely, if the Director is worried that an audit of his department will uncover unlicensed software, it's the Director and/or the IT guys who should be worrying about their jobs.