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

And yet some big corporations are working with P2P

[PhillC]

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 for the benefit of the general public.

Where's the disconnect?

If he'd been a tenured professor

[davidwr]

If he'd been a tenured professor, he wouldn't have been under as much personal pressure to resign but that wouldn't have stopped his department from being "audited" to death by the industry, and he might still have chosen to resign to "take one for the team."

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.

[niiler]

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.

Pressured?

[91degrees]

Okay, the teacher was pressured by the director, and the director was pressured by the Dean.

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.

Re:Pressured?

[Jisakiel]

The hand of theirs is clearly behind. As an example, the teacher had a conference room booked like a week before, just to be said that it was suddenly "not available", although it was empty. Also, some of their listeners did book another room by theirselves, without mentioning at all that conference, and had their reservation cancelled right before the conference without any reasons given at all.

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.

[raeljds]

Well, while it's true the end result is the same (he loses his job), the distinction is still important.

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 teach my students to use P2P.

[ahfoo]

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.

Re:from the faux-news dept.

[gowen]

>blockquote> What else would *YOU* do if they told you that unless you leave, they will fire the whole department along with you? Me?? Well, the first thing I'd do is obtain a formal statement from the university and a copy of my contract of employment.

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.

Re:No, the firing is NOT legitimate

[stlhawkeye]

The proud history of universities is that they are supposed to be places for the sharing of information, not places for censorship.

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.

For CS students

[grahamsz]

Teach them how to write P2P systems.

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

[interstellar_donkey]

I gave an impromptu lecture last week--to a group of high school students--about the recording industry. It went something like this:

"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 . . ." Then I went into a good 40 minute description of the business practices of that industry. The exploitation, the loophole payola, the underhanded deals. I went to show them on the board how if a major record label signed their band, how they could sell a million records and still not make any money themselves. To be fair, I also pointed out that most bands don't sell many recordings, and how the industry loses money on them.

"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.

Re:I tried a slightly different approach

[nsayer]

"Mr. Highgate, is sharing music files on the Internet wrong?"

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:from the faux-news dept.

[dgatwood]

Hear hear. I don't carry them on my cell phone, but I think I still have up-to-date phone and email contacts for:

• 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:Um

[edremy]

You're quite right that tenure is not a perfect shield, but faculty members tend to get very, very ornery when it's threatened.

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:To make the lecture worth it...

[Optali]

Partly: Those guys are IP-right holders. They represent authors and editors and act as intermediary in transactions between customers such as online stores and the music industry.

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

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.