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.

Comments

To make the lecture worth it...

[FlyByPC]

...he should have ended it with "I'll probably be fired for this, so each of you go tell everybody you know." Or something to that effect.

How are you going to suppress a n^x communication growth curve?

I don't get it

[shreevatsa]

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

[Catbeller]

"Prostitution is harmful to health (STDs, violent pimps, emotional handicap of many prostitutes)."

CRIMINALIZED prostitution makes pimps and slaves, not legalized prostitution. Not to mention impoverished prostitutes. The emotional damage is caused by pimps, johns who can't be found or charged, police that don't care, and the fact that the women are de facto slaves with no escape route.

Legalized prostitution, done right, eliminates pimps, who exist outside the law, makes prostitutes rich, if they handle the money right, and empowers the woman rather than enslaves her, because she's a volunteer, being highly paid, rather than a chained and abused slave.

The major reason why women couldn't sell sex legally in our history is this: they'd be rich and independent, and that was NOT to be allowed by men, period. After all, they are the sole providers of a highly valued commodity.

Illegal prostitution gave men the ability to take the women's money away, in one form or another: by artificially lowering the price, by inserting male middlemen who could use their physical or political power to take a huge cut, and turning the business into a slave market.

This time they've gone too far.

[IO ERROR]

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.

[zoomba]

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"

Re:This time they've gone too far.

[Monkelectric]

The reason to break the law is of course, the law is written and paid for BY the companies that benefit from those laws.

The game is *fixed*, and you can't win playing a fixed game.

Re:This time they've gone too far.

[russotto]

What you fail to realize is that the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, etc. have near-total control over the channels by which copyright law is changed. Their advantages are insurmountable. Trying to change a law which they support is like Pee Wee Herman trying to win a barehanded fight with Mike Tyson. So when you suggest "changing the law", you're suggesting an impossible course of action.

You present the choices as
1) STFU and Obey The law
2) Change the law through the accepted channels for doing so
3) Violate the law

and suggest 3) is undesirable. But because 2) is impossible, by opposing 3) you're supporting 1).

Re:This time they've gone too far.

[zoomba]

Then we're screwed, democracy is lost and we should all just give up and go home.

It's this defeatist attitude that makes your prophecy of being unable to fix things self-fulfilling.

Re:This time they've gone too far.

[mrchaotica]

No, it means we're screwed, democracy is lost, and because of that, civil disobedience is the last recourse.

Re:This time they've gone too far.

[Maggott]

As the saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

The law won't be changed by any means that is within the reasonable capacities of the average Slashdotter. The majority of us have no political authority or influence. At all. I write letters to Orin Hatch every year, and sure enough, every year he turns around and tells everyone that my state is very supportive of putting a death penalty on owning an mp3 player. I vote in every presidential election, and every time the presidential candidate whom I voted for ends up with 0 votes *total*. (Which is why I like to slap people who say "Every Vote Counts!")

However, there are other ways to fight stupid and immoral laws, and one of them is to make sure they're unenforceable. Sure, that won't fix the law, but will fix it's effects and it's our only option. That's why the P2P arms race took place to begin with. We have no political authority, but we have a lot of combined technical knowhow.

Anybody knows that you don't win a battle by fighting the enemy where he is the strongest. Legislators have no reason to listen to us. They have hundreds of thousands of crisp, green reasons to listen to the **AA-holes. Lobbyists get paid handsome salaries to push their rhetoric 7 days a week for years at a time. We'd have to finance it out of our own pocket. Can you afford to take three straight years off and lobby for what you think is fair?

However, we control our own computers. Therefore, if we fight a war of software, the advantage goes to us. That's why they fight with more assheaded draconian laws whereas we fight with more robust and untrackable P2P apps. Sure, they sometimes try to write P2P tracking applications to find filesharers, and we sometimes write letters to our congresscowards. Neither one makes any appreciable dent. Each of us, therefore, tries to pull the battlefield closer to our respective power bases--we try to ensure they can't find filesharers to prosecute by making sure it's as big of a pain in the ass as possible, whereas they try to ensure they can find them by pushing laws that ensure they can demand any info they want out of ISPs at the drop of a hat.

What it comes down to is the same thing you've heard a million times before. Many people do not consider copyright infringement to be wrong. I know I don't. I think the whole concept is assheaded and there's abundant proof that every statement they make in defense of it is wrong at this point, ESPECIALLY in the entertainment industry. Likewise, there's people like you who swear up and down that it's theft. And since we cannot agree to disagree and just ignore each other, we fight.

Re:This time they've gone too far.

[swv3752]

I take it you are not an American Zoomba. Boston Tea Party. Sometimes the only way to effectively protest is to deny someone else something, whether it is profit via copyright infringement, theft, or vandalism. You need to read the writing of Henry David Thoreau. Sometimes violating laws is the only moral action to do.

Copyright infringement is not theft. They are legally two different things. One is copying an abstract idea while the other involves taking physical property. Copyright infringement is a civil action in most jurisdictions and most circumstances. Theft is a criminal action.

There is some definate problems with how Copyright is being handled lately. This going to be an even bigger problem in the future. For one example of the problems we will be facing, check out Kim Stanley Robinson's "Elephant's Memory". To summarise the issue- there is a finite number of combinations that make up a particular art form. With the never ending copyright durations, there is a dwindling supply of new combinations to create new works of art. How do you create a new song when every five note chord you might come up with is already copyrighted?

By ignoring copyright now, we force things to be changed. Look how Napster has given rise to various legal and semilegal digital music distribution services. Do you really think there would have been an iTunes or iPods if there was no Napster?

Resigned != Fired

[licamell]

The Director called me and first asked me to remove any link to the university from my website, and also to "hide" the fact that I was teaching there. Then he told me about the pressures and threats he and the Program received (to be subjected to software licenses inspection, copyright violations inspections, or anything that may damage them). Obviously I had to resign to save his job (and everybody else's at the Masters Program). So I did.

I'm not trying to say what happened was at all right, but it does not help the argument to start stories with the claim that he was fired. Fudging the little facts to get attention always in the long run will be held against you, and your side will not be taken as seriously.

Also, one should remember that this teacher was not approved to give the lecture and decided to go without permission and give it in the cafeteria. This would be grounds for inspecting someones future at most companies/universities.

Once again, I think what happened was a shame, but I also think that ignoring these facts is just unacceptable.

Re:from the faux-news dept.

[h00pla]

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.

Um

[mcc]

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

Re:Um

[networkBoy]

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:Um

[h4rm0ny]

I dunno, but I'd guess someone who can't spell "tantamount" doesn't have a lot of experience of working in a university.

An inability to spell some words correctly, or being dyslexic, does not indicate that someone is incapable of having a good argument. Nor does it indicate that he's making things up.

Even if it did, you should make allowance for the fact that in an international forum the poster could be working in his second language.

And as I seem to be the only poster here that has actually read the article, I'll quote the relevant passage:

The Director called me and first asked me to remove any link to the university from my website, and also to "hide" the fact that I was teaching there. Then he told me about the pressures and threats he and the Program received (to be subjected to software licenses inspection, copyright violations inspections, or anything that may damage them). Obviously I had to resign to save his job (and everybody else's at the Masters Program). So I did.

He says that this is why he resigned, which I would say is tantamount to being fired.

Re:Both sides?

[MightyMartian]

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.

All this talk about not being fired...

[smcd]

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".

Re:Two points:

[MightyMartian]

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.

The point here is that he was CENSORED

[Spy der Mann]

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!

No, the firing is NOT legitimate

[arete]

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.

Spain != U.S.

[Snap E Tom]

*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?

Software license audits

[augustz]

Interesting how one of the pressure tactics were the license audits. Propriatary vendors obviously have the right to do this, but it appears to have been a source of great leverage in silencing critics.

Also interesting, the teacher was only going to share his opinion on why using P2P may be legal. In America at least we are generally pretty protective of the right to debate ideas. The MPAA and its spanish counterparts though appear to be opposed to this concept.

If you're going to be an academic institution it would seem prudent to move away from software and support of groups that are unwilling to even allow different opinions to be expressed on a college compus about a topic. We used to call that type of exchange education.

Academia != Business

[kurisuto]

Also, one should remember that this teacher was not approved to give the lecture and decided to go without permission and give it in the cafeteria. This would be grounds for inspecting someones future at most companies/universities.

At companies, yes. At universities, no.

In academia, knowledge moves forward as we argue for competing viewpoints. Universities can't function properly unless it's possible to argue for unpopular viewpoints without fear of reprisal. This is one of the major differences between academia and the business world.

I'm a faculty member myself. If I choose to stand up in a cafeteria and speak my mind on any subject I please, that is my right. I'm not required or expected to obtain anybody's approval or permission. The rules are that I can't be fired for this. If you disagree with my viewpoint, then the correct response is to use your own freedom to state your dissent.

Most folks in academia, both faculty and administration, understand this, agree with it strongly as a value, and go to considerable lengths to safeguard this ability. Those safeguards grossly broke down in this case.

Re:Academia != Business

[menkhaura]

That's precisely the point, slashdotters seem to be more interested in the "he was fired/he was resigned" question than the crucial point of FREEDOM OF SPEECH, which so many of our ancestors fought, suffered, and died for, being shamelessly raped.