How P2P Can Taint a Career

duncan writes "After appearing on the BBC news review program Newsnight to discuss the recent Grokster case, Alex Hanff returned to work the next day and was promptly sacked because 'his presence within the company could count against it when bidding for big government contracts.' Read more at The Guardian"

Comments

How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[nokilli]

Build a website that catalogues all the evil shit corporations do to employees, so that consumers get to know about the evil shit and take their business elsewhere.

Call it something like, whodotheyfuckoverwiththemoneyyougivethem.com, only shorter, while making sure the word stealth appears nowhere within.)

It it catches on, then corporations would be afraid of how their treatment towards employees could count against the way consumers look at them.

Fight fire with fire.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

There is fuckedcompany.com but they want your subscription (=money), hence they suck themselves as well.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[nokilli]

Dammit, this is a dupe!?!

I gave you a chance timothy AND YOU BLEW IT!

whodoesthemostdupestoriesonslashdotoranywhereelseo nthisplanet.com should return: 200 timothy

I feel so used.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[iibagod]

How many people hate one of the places they used to work for? Can you imagine how many unfounded accusations would be lobbed at past employers. You'd have to have anonymity when posting such things, for fear that your employer could get your information. This supposed site would have so many unfounded and just plain WRONG accusations you wouldn't know what was true and what wasn't anymore, making it useless.

And, even providing that a majority of the accusations are true, how much would it really hurt the employers? "Oh no, sir, I read that the company we use for all our advertising makes up statistics for their clients in order to make them look better. In fact, this ad firm actually hires people to do fake 'testimonials' to bolster the percieved quality of their clients' products. For shame! We shouldn't do business with these liars!"

No company will stop doing something that makes them money unless it starts costing them money. A subset of people on the internet casting about rumor about supposed unseemly behavior won't cost them a dime.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[nokilli]

True that.

I guess what I was thinking of is something that consumers might want to use as a portal.

The ideal scenario is some kind of PDA-gadget they take with them to the market to compare the prices at that store with others in the same area, or for web purchases, something that interjects at the point-of-purchase.

That would be the perfect time to say, "Yes, Cocoa-Puffs ARE cheaper here, but did you know they anally rape their employees with weed whackers?", or something like that.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[QuantumG]

You're one of those hippies aint ya? When someone says "why do you drink Pepsi when I know you prefer Coke?" you give an answer like "Coke was sued for underpaying blacks in the 1990's and I've never forgiven them!" Choose the best and most cost effective product. Don't judge the company that makes it. Otherwise you're just fucking up the system. Instead of the most superior products being on the shelves we'll have substandard products dominating the market share because the people who make them care about the environment or share some other wacky political ideal with the boycotting public.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[nokilli]

You're talking about speculation, right?

That's why this employee in the story got canned.

The whole point of this exercise is to introduce risk on the other side of the equation. I'm not saying it's fair.

But then, neither was it fair that this fellow lost his job.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[timmarhy]

people have the right to choose the products they buy based on any critiria they want. other wise YOUR fucking up the system. the only way to pressure companies is with our spending dollar. are you suggesting just because a company makes a great product it should be allowed to do anything it wants? as a side note, companies that do treat their employee's poorly always end up failing anyway, due to them not being able to keep any decent or well trained staff.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[NitsujTPU]

This is actually, a very good idea.

Only a few people would really be able to participate in this though. You have to be able to leave your job, never come back to it, and be guaranteed that future employers won't hold this against you.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Luddite]

> You're one of those hippies aint ya?

I'm no hippy buddy, but I certainly consider things like human rights and enviromental records when buying things. It's part of the total cost of producing an item and we all pay it one way or another.

>> Otherwise you're just fucking up the system

any business model that doesn't consider environmental sustainability or basic human rights is "fucking up the system". Sure you can cut corners to save money, but it's frequently at the cost of things you just can't buy back.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[iamhassi]

You're one of those hippies aint ya? When someone says "why do you use Linux when 95% of the world uses Windows?" you give an answer like " Microsoft is evil and I've never forgiven them!" Choose the best and most cost effective product. Don't judge the company that makes it. Otherwise you're just fucking up the system. Instead of the most superior products being on the shelves we'll have substandard products dominating the market share because the people who make them care about the environment or share some other wacky political ideal with the boycotting public.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't judge the company that makes it. Otherwise you're just fucking up the system.

That same system will turn around and fuck you as soon as it gets the chance (offshoring of jobs, etc.). Treat other people fairly and there's more chance that they will treat you well in return.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[QuantumG]

First of all, it's really hard to understand your point when you can't even use the language properly. I presume you ment YOU'RE, otherwise your sentence doesn't parse. That straight, no, I'm not fucking up the system. The system works because people buy the best value product. How they value the product varies from person to person but it is not debatable that valuing the product is a different and seperate concern from valuing the process used to make the product. If two products are identical except one is cheaper than the other you should buy the one that is cheaper. If you buy the one that is more expensive because the people who make the one that is more expensive share some of your beliefs you're just fucking up the system. You're basically paying someone to follow your beliefs. If that's what you want to do, fine, go stand on the street corner and hand out dollars to anyone who is willing to accept your prefered idiology. But if the company that is making the cheaper product goes out of business as a result of you confusing valuing the product with valuing the producer then we're all fucked. The shelves will be full of expensive products claiming to be supporters of your particular idiology or someone else's particular idiology. Instead of buying the apples that are $1 cheaper per bushel you'll buy the apples that are made at the communist workers farm. Someone else will buy the apples that are made by the Ayn Rand Apple Farm and yet someone else will buy the apples that are made by the Happy Green Vegetarian Apple Farm. The market force that drives the price of apples down will be totally fucked and we'll all end up paying more for our apples than we want to. Then we'll stop buying apples all together because our particular idiological group is not selling apples at a price that we are willing to pay for them and we feel like traitors if we go buy apples from a competing idiology.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[utnow]

And in the meantime i'll drink my cheap coffee, eat cheap tacos at taco-bell, wear clothes that I wouldn't be able to afford otherwise, and get a certain thrill knowing that it was all at the expense of many families of people who got paid little or nothing to do it. Why? Because i'm a sick fuck... I don't deny it. http://www.youeatit.com/

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[rm69990]

Ummm, how is that fucking with the system? You mean, if I am thouroughly disgusted with a company and its ethics, I should still buy from them? For instance, I don't purchase MS products because I don't like the ethics of the company. I don't run around calling them evil, I just simply take my business elsewhere. How am i fucking the system??? Explain that to me please, I'd really like to know how. Now if I ran around telling everyone MS had employees working in sweatshops, then not only is that libel and slander, but I would be "fucking the system" (I don't even know what you mean by that). As far as I'm concerned, you telling people how to spend there money is fucking the system too.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[QuantumG]

Isn't the fact that workers in third world countries can do your job for cheaper than you enough to make you think that you're asking too much for your labor? I laugh the hardest when I think about programmers complaining that their jobs have been offshored. I'm a programmer btw. We've had it so sweet for so long we've actually forgotten that we were getting a free ride. There's all these quasi-programmers now that didn't exist 20 years ago (Perl programmers, Excel programmers, etc) and they've slowly learnt what we knew all along programming really isn't that hard. Now all the US programmers (who earned 3 times as much as I do here in Australia, which is twice as much as programmers earn in Japan, which is 10 times as much as programmers earn in India) are whining that their playboy lifestyle is being taken away from them. Boo hoo. Guess you'll have to go get a job where at the end of the day you actually feel tired.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[SillyNickName4me]

I'm not fucking up the system. The system works because people buy the best value product. How they value the product varies from person to person but it is not debatable that valuing the product is a different and seperate concern from valuing the process used to make the product. If two products are identical except one is cheaper than the other you should buy the one that is cheaper.

You sir (or madam) are extremely short sighted.

You ARE fucking up the system because of not considering the hidden cost of such cheaper products.

You do not seem to realize that the price for messing up environment and society will have to be payed anyway.

If a product is really cheaper while equal in all other aspects (that means INCLUDING the hidden cost of environmental and social damage) then you are right that you should take it.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Idimmu Xul]

You're one of those hippies aint ya? When someone says "why do you drink Pepsi when I know you prefer Coke?" you give an answer like "Coke was sued for underpaying blacks in the 1990's and I've never forgiven them!" Choose the best and most cost effective product. Don't judge the company that makes it. Otherwise you're just fucking up the system. Instead of the most superior products being on the shelves we'll have substandard products dominating the market share because the people who make them care about the environment or share some other wacky political ideal with the boycotting public.

I believe Einstein said it best, when he said:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

It's really easy not to believe in anything, as it makes fighting for what you believe in so much easier. The system (society) is far more fucked if you go around supporting abusive organisations because their unnecessary product is best, than if you make sacrifices and help to make society a better place.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[QuantumG]

WTF? Seriously, what's hard to understand here, you should buy the product that is the best value, not the product which is made by your favourite idiological organisation. Worst of all are the people who buy a more expensive product because x% of the purchase price goes to charity. For fuck sake, just buy the cheaper product and donate the money to charity yourself if that's what you want to do.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[SillyNickName4me]

I'm afraid you missed a bit of sarcasm there...

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

whoops anon does undo mods... *finds other comments*

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[turbidostato]

"But if the company that is making the cheaper product goes out of business as a result of you confusing valuing the product with valuing the producer then we're all fucked"

Yes.

And that's why there is no company in the whole world and never will be that bases its marketing campaigns on projecting an apropriate corporate image onto the prospective client, so he buys a brand instead of a product.

Hey, now that I think about it! How is it that there are marketing campaings at all? People just need to go to the shelves and see what's the cheapest product, that's all, no need for that pretty almost nude girl doing something not even remotely related with the product, nor no need to pay really big bucks so Real Famous Someone appears on TV saying how good my Whatever Product is and (in a subconstient level) implying You Little Nobody can be someone like him by consuming that same Wonderful Whatever!

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[rm69990]

whoops, I'm afraid I'm a bit daft here, not missing sarcasm :-P. I meant to reply to the parent comment.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[QuantumG]

Yes, and I've always considered that kind of marketing to be belittling and hoped that the majority of consumers were actually capable of ignoring it and comparing two similar products to determine which one is best. Surely you're not suggesting that people who go out and buy products based on which has the better advertisements are responsible, are you?

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

the only way to pressure companies is with our spending dollar

This is not insightful. It's utter rubbish.

There's more to life than money, matey.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[aussie_a]

Isn't the fact that workers in third world countries can do your job for cheaper than you enough to make you think that you're asking too much for your labor?

The cost of living is generally lower in other countries. The level of living conditions is also lower. That's why the programmers can survive on less. Stuff isn't as expensive and they live in shit conditions.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

due to them not being able to keep any decent or well trained staff

disposable, desperate employees are the ideal employees in the current corporate climate.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[SillyNickName4me]

WTF? Seriously, what's hard to understand here, you should buy the product that is the best value, not the product which is made by your favourite idiological organisation.

Buying products made by companies that act in a responsible way is not exactly the same as only buying only from your favourite idiological organisation, stop confusing the 2.

A company that does not consider the social and/or environmental consequences of what they are doing is causing hidden cost for me (and everyone else).

That cost is hidden but is definitely there. Not considering that fact is extremely short sighted.

I prefer dealing with companies that confront me with the price for that upfront instead.

Worst of all are the people who buy a more expensive product because x% of the purchase price goes to charity. For fuck sake, just buy the cheaper product and donate the money to charity yourself if that's what you want to do.

Nice try, but that was not what was being argued here at all, stop confusing the issues. If I were to counter your argument with a similarely irrelevant hyperbole, I could say that we need to allow slavery again, the way in which something is produced is irrelevant, only value counts, and it is a much cheaper way to get such value.

The argument was to not buy from companies that do things that are not desirable to society (because of those things being destructive to society)

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Idimmu Xul]

Maybe also we should refuse governments who don't give black people in California the vote :o

Oh that's right, cause I tried to use my dollars to force other people to believe my particular idiology over their own instead of just supporting the market system by evaluating the product not the producer.

Being a bit hypocriticle here aren't you? Your belief clearly being that products and their price are more important than the people living and breathing around you. That is a belief you know, that you are 'forcing' upon me, just as I am 'forcing' my belief (similar to Google's, i.e. Don't be evil) on you.

Does the sum of your compassion for society really come down to hoping that everyone can buy the best products at the cheapest financial cost, regardless of the social cost? Especially when it comes down to unnecessary luxuries choice of brand of cola?

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[aussie_a]

It's really easy not to believe in anything, as it makes fighting for what you believe in so much easier. The system (society) is far more fucked if you go around supporting abusive organisations because their unnecessary product is best, than if you make sacrifices and help to make society a better place.

I sure hope you don't use windows.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[SillyNickName4me]

Checking the anon box does indeed not allow you to post and moderate in the same discussion. Logging off does.

There is a reason for not allowing posting and moderating in the same discussion....

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

I presume you meant to spell meant m-e-a-n-t.

I presume you meant to spell prefered p-r-e-f-e-r-r-e-d.

I presume you meant to spell ideology i-d-e-o-l-o-g-y.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[SillyNickName4me]

Ah :) and there your comment makes a lot of sense indeed (imho)

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Idimmu Xul]

Debian/GNOME as of 2000.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[bburton]

I don't agree with you.

Say company A and company B both produce competing products. Company A produces their product for $50. Company B, however, sets up a sweat shop full of children working night and day. They can sell their product for only $35.

Now how can you say that you can knowingly buy the cheaper product with a good conscience? Money isn't the only thing that matters in this world. This is what's wrong with humans. Don't you get it yet? We all have a responsibility to each other.

Enjoy eating your lobster while others starve asshole.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Khyber]

Isn't the fact that workers in third world countries can do your job for cheaper than you enough to make you think that you're asking too much for your labor?

Isn't the fact that our cost of living damn-near requires us to have to earn such high wages in the first place kinda the answer to your question? We have to earn money by our country's standards and monetary system. We don't use Canadian money natively here, nor Deutchmarks or pounds, we have our own monetary system of barter and trade.

And since we set one of the standards of living, luxury, and other fine things we take for granted, we've got a price to pay. To poorly attempt to keep it going, we tend to outlaw "vagrants," in order to "inspire" people to earn their maximum potential, regardless of giving consideration for the basic needs of life in our society;shelter, water, food, and (at least we believe,) an education are what's deemed essential. Even though these "vagrants" legitimately work, they don't make enough to pay rent, and it's unfortunately the only job they can possibly get. Boom, one night in jail, one missed day of work, one lost job, one person right back out on the streets, worse off than before. That's capitalism for you, Communism for the rich. Even Marx said it himself, his system would have been perfect, if not for the simple constant of human greed. If he could have devised a way to satiate the greed, perhaps, (I'm not an advocate, don't call me a Communist, please,) his system might have had maybe an equal chance of working as the original promise of our own democracy back in the 1700s. Maybe.

Okay, I'm done talking out of my crappy life experience now.. Feel free to mod me -5 Troll, Flamebait, Depressing but True, and STFU, n00b.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[harkabeeparolyn]

No company will stop doing something that makes them money unless it starts costing them money. A subset of people on the internet casting about rumor about supposed unseemly behavior won't cost them a dime.

Thus the only true satisfaction to be found in these situations is obtained by paying a final visit to your employer with a couple handguns, a shotgun and satchel full of ammo. Nobody gives a fuck about your grievances anyway, so don't even bother leaving a note. Just let them wonder.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[xiando]

Your resistance against clean air, fresh drinking-water, biological diversity and richness on earth is noted. You are extremely evil and I would like to take this opportunity to point out to you that todays capitalistic system is fundamentally wrong and totally futile because it neglects to hold legal persons (corporations, industry and normal persons) accountable for the damage they do to the earth and biological diversity in the making of their products. Until laws are passed who tax or forbid plundering of the earth the only method of contributing to a sustainable development remains being the cash vote. The cash vote is your right to vote for one corporation over another corporation because of how you feel, environmental concerns and other reasons. While I am at it, you can also vote for a sustainable development without spending money by recycling.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Trepalium]

It's called taking responsibility for the consequences of one's actions. Maybe you'd prefer people trying to get laws passed to change distasteful company behaviour? There are only two other ways to change a company's behaviour -- getting a big enough stake in the company to directly achieve the change, and withholding purchases from the company until their behaviour changes.

You may think this behaviour is in opposition to laissez-faire capitalism, but you have to understand that buying from companies that don't use sweatshop labour, for example, is just another form of differentiation, and value. Criticizing people for buying because of ideology is just as stupid as criticizing them for buying a more expensive item for quality, appearance or any other arbitrary reasons that you don't care about. This is the market system at work, even if you don't like the aspect it's targeting. Then again, you might feel somewhat differently if the company in question was poisoning the groundwater in your neighbourhood because of improper disposal of toxic byproducts, for example, even if they DID have cheaper prices than all their competitors. These "product not the producer" values tend to break down pretty quickly once someone is personally involved.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[azzy]

That's not entirely rubbish. By choosing where to spend your dollar, or my pound, we can pressure companies - though it helps if we also educate the company as to WHY we do not wish to be their customer.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[ultranova]

First of all, it's really hard to understand your point when you can't even use the language properly.

Quoth the single-paragraph troll ;).

The system works because people buy the best value product. How they value the product varies from person to person but it is not debatable that valuing the product is a different and seperate concern from valuing the process used to make the product. If two products are identical except one is cheaper than the other you should buy the one that is cheaper.

Certainly. What you don't seem to understand is that the process used to make the product can increase the effective cost of the product much higher than the price tag claims. If the process results in environment getting poisoned, those poisons will deteriorate my health, shortening my lifespan and decreasing the quality of what time I have remaining; if it causes social unrest (by treating the employees like shit, for example), I run the risk of getting killed in the resulting riots. Either way, I might end up paying a much higher price than I paid in the store.

Instead of buying the apples that are $1 cheaper per bushel you'll buy the apples that are made at the communist workers farm. Someone else will buy the apples that are made by the Ayn Rand Apple Farm and yet someone else will buy the apples that are made by the Happy Green Vegetarian Apple Farm. The market force that drives the price of apples down will be totally fucked and we'll all end up paying more for our apples than we want to.

So I shouldn't care about the communist workers farm's employees treatment, but I should care about your ability to buy cheap apples ? Why should I ? After all, I'm already willing to pay the extra dollar per bushel, so why shouldn't I support the market force that makes the employers treat their employees well over the one that makes apples cost less ?

Then we'll stop buying apples all together because our particular idiological group is not selling apples at a price that we are willing to pay for them and we feel like traitors if we go buy apples from a competing idiology.

If I'm willing to support an ideology that I'm opposed to just to get a 1$ per bushel discount on apples, I am a traitor.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[MysteriousPreacher]

Buying products from a company I know to be ethical adds value for me.

If it were legal, would you buy the cheapest product knowing that the company making it provides funding for guerilla groups who kidnap children, fill them with drugs and turn them in to child-soldiers?

if your answer is yes, then you've got a pretty interesting moral compass. If your answer is no, then you're making a decision based on idiological reasons.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[turbidostato]

"Surely you're not suggesting that people who go out and buy products based on which has the better advertisements are responsible, are you?"

It is not me the one who has to judge it.

On the other hand free market (which you seem to be very fond of) is free market: consumers choose based on, well, whatever they feel; producers compete to offer the best to answer to that feeling. Producers sometimes go even further than that: in their race for being the best and first answering to those consumer's feelings, they try to induce those very feelings; that way they insure being the first over there themselves.

In its very roots capitalism (well, free market) is about perceptions: I give you an apple for two coins because I *percive* I'm better with those two coins than with the apple; you get the apple because you *percieve* you are better with the apple than with the two coins. Everything else is just a bit of sophystication over this very basic principle. But perceptions are... perceptions. Who are you (or me) to say what is the "proper" basis for these perceptions to take place? One's perception might be based on front price, while other would think in terms of TCO, or ROI, or how cool it looks like, or how macho it feels when being the owner of one of "These". If as it seems in the USA, free market is good if only because it is free, who can tell this perception is good and this is bad? And even if you could arrive with a profound study which makes choosing the right product an exact science, how would you induce other people to go your way? Maybe people who buy based on advertisments are not "responsible", but you for sure won't say those who make the advertisements are idiots: they put the girl or the SuperStar over there because, whatever the reason, it sells and that's all about it.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[cowbutt]

The ideal scenario is some kind of PDA-gadget they take with them to the market to compare the prices at that store with others in the same area, or for web purchases, something that interjects at the point-of-purchase.

That would be the perfect time to say, "Yes, Cocoa-Puffs ARE cheaper here, but did you know they anally rape their employees with weed whackers?", or something like that.

Like the Corporate Fallout Detector, you mean?

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

If you pay more for products from the employers that treat their third-world employees better, then that just speeds the day when those third-world employees will be asking the same amount as you, as their standard of living is equal to yours. (yours has decreased, theirs has increased). I see this as a good thing -- a level playing field, which all the capitalists seem to like.

Isn't the fact that workers in third world countries can do your job for cheaper than you enough to make you think that you're asking too much for your labor?

So you not only want your physical products from sweatshops, you want everything else in your life produced their too? Want to go and dance on their graves twice a year or something as well? I can only hope you end up making license plates in prison for $1.75 a week or something. Payback's a bitch.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

s/their/there/ (meant to preview :)

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

Woo-hoo, another free market über alles troll who doesn't know (or doesn't care) about economic externalities.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

This supposed site would have so many unfounded and just plain WRONG accusations you wouldn't know what was true and what wasn't anymore, making it useless.

Welcome to Slashdot.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Fragglebabe]

WTF? Seriously, what's hard to understand here, you should buy the product that is the best value, not the product which is made by your favourite idiological organisation.

I'm afraid I don't understand your argument. It seems rather impossible to me that, in a democratic and free society, you feel that you can go around and tell people what they should and shouldn't do. Not everyone has money at the top of their priority tree, and I think you'll find that, for a lot of the population, ethical considerations are becoming much more important. I don't understand why it's so important that everyone saves an extra 57p/$1 when that money could save a little girl from working in a sweatshop all day. Or it could save a woman with nine kids from having to sew footballs together for pittance, and help her to get a much better job and even an education.

When just one person buys the more expensive product, 57p doesn't sound like a lot. But we're a world community, and if 10,000 people do it across the globe, which is a tiny proportion of the global population, then that's £5700 ($10,000). That's enough to start building a school. Or a few fresh water wells. So yeah, I know $1 of the purchase price going to charity doesn't sound like a lot. But if even a quarter of the population of the US buys that product, that's $73,933,533.50 (£42,069,440.81) raised for charity. That's an amazing amount, and at the moment, it's not being raised in full, because people can't be bothered to reach into their pockets and give an extra dollar/57p. Shame, really.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[CmdrGravy]

Is spelling a part of the correct use of language ?

What is idiology ?

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[CmdrGravy]

What is an idiological organisation ? Is this something you have just made up ?

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[penix1]

That's already patented by the US Postal Service. Wouldn't want to infringe and all...

B.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Skye16]

The study of idiots. How appropriate.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[so sue mee]

http://www.corpwatch.org/

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

because the director of the company was quoted as saying that the steel union has become corrupt and greedy over the last ten years

If anyone out there still isn't convinced that this guy is spouting complete nonsense in an attempt to rile up the slashdotters, that's your proof.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Junior J. Junior III]

If the site were a wiki site, the companies accused could respond to the allegations, ensuring that if the allegations were outright false, or mistakes were made and later redressed, readers of the site could learn that.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[TheKnave]

You know what... You're absolutely right. But I've just had a brainwave as to how to use this to our advantage...

Mildly offtopic I know, but on the topic of harnessing the power corporations.

Step 1: Create Zombie Malware that pops up with the message 'This product has been shown to cause cancer in lab rats!' whenever your browser opens a popup window.
Step 2: Watch gleefully as big corporates sue the crap out of malware companies and lobby politicians to get malware banned, bigger fines etc.
Step 3: Smoke a fat cigar as bevvies of beautiful tech-savvy girls (wearing very little) wave palm fronds and bring in sherbert and peeled grapes. (Ok, so I invested my profit in fantasy already :p)

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[BVis]

This implies that said companies cared about their reputation as an employer. They have the jobs; if you want to keep your house/car/life you have to work for them. Try and set up your own business and they'll crush you.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[tweek]

Interesting site but I seem to detect a slight bend to it.

I personally prefer non-partisan sites such as factcheck.org. The site you mention strikes me as a partisan anti-corporate rally point.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Junior J. Junior III]

Participating in a wiki is optional and voluntary, so if they don't want to defend their reputation, that's their decision.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[BVis]

This seems as good a comment to reply to as any:

Let's not forget that the only vote we really have these days, the only vote that matters, is the one we make with our wallets. Politicians are bought and sold; the two viable parties are so much different sides of the same coin that it's hard to tell them apart these days. Grassroots movements to save the spotted whales in Alaska only serve to amuse politicians and galvanize opposition. Big business cares about one thing: money. If enough people stop buying from companies that treat their employees poorly, and it's clear that that is the reason, then the company is faced with either improving how they treat their people or going out of business.

Of course what will probably happen is they'll pay lip service to eliminating sweatshop labor/Chinese imports/wage slavery et cetera, without actually changing their policies. Then they'll fire/sue/pay off/slander anyone who tries to point that out.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

as a side note, companies that do treat their employee's poorly always end up failing anyway, due to them not being able to keep any decent or well trained staff.

Oh, well that explains why walmart is such a crashing failure.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[BVis]

That is true. The threat of termination will, however, prevent employees from posting information regarding their employer. Even if you can post anonymously (I'm not familiar enough with how wiki works) more than likely the comments can and will be traced back to you.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Junior J. Junior III]

And the threat of publicity should (in theory anyway) prevent employers from doing shitty things to their employees.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Hello, the tree you were just hugging called. It is feeling abandoned, so please go back to hugging said tree, and stop posting on /. thanx.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[BVis]

The key words being "in theory". Unfortunately if one company starts not caring about how they treat their employees, and realizes cost savings as a result, then their competitors will start doing the same in order to be "competitive". This seems to be happening across all industries at the moment.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[QuantumG]

How can you claim that programmers need to be paid what they are paid when people who live in the exact same communities as programmers get paid so much less? We all know we get paid too much. The only thing that makes it possible for us to demand such large salaries is the scarcity of programmers. Well hey, our masters have found a solution to that problem, they've expanded the market of available programmers to find people who are willing to do the job for cheaper than we are.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Xenophon Fenderson,]

The only way a company would respond (if they respond at all) is with a defamation lawsuit, not by editing a wiki.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[colinrichardday]

But what if the ideology is part of the product? Would a Linux distro be the same, and would it include the same development tools, if Linux were proprietary?

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

Luigi no no no, he's an Ayn Rand fan. Fand. There's what's Objective and if you don't do what is Objectively good, you're immoral. You can perceive this Objectivity and everyone perceives it the same way.

There is a product that is Objectively better than all the others of it's class. (It's of course of an Objective class and you may not understand this product in relation to any other classes. You may not use a product for a "novel" purpose, only an Objective one, or you're probably immoral.) If you don't choose this Objectively superior product over the Objectively inferior ones, you're immoral or stupid, but most likely both.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[bladesjester]

Besides, swords are more fun and a lot more stress relieving =]

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[colinrichardday]

Are you saying that I have no right to mess up the system? Is the system so perfect, so sacred, that none may mess with it?

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Junior J. Junior III]

They'll go bankrupt doing that. After few dozen lawsuits, they'll realize this.

At which point, they'll try to legislate employment fairness websites out of existence.

This will cause a crisis of constitutional (free speech) and international law (offshore servers hosting these sites) which will be too large to effectively be resolved in anything resembling a reasonable timeframe.

Meanwhile, the sites will remain up and people will be able to use them.

Man, it'd be so easy to bring about some justice if the people weren't all self-interested sheep.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Caltheos]

There is a little thing called the Better Business Bureau that does a great job of collecting customer complaints already. Any time you use a service company especially (moving companies, lawn services, food services) you should check them to make sure they don't have a large number of complains.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[IdleTime]

To top it off, there are people who want these nice corporations to actually run our lifes. They are called libertarians and they love companies who lie, cheat and steal and want them to control their lifes. I don't!

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

No company will stop doing something that makes them money unless it starts costing them money.

You hit it on the nose.

In general, people just don't care. The bottom line is all that matters, and that's why so many lives suck.

Sure, we live like kings. Hot running water all the time, electronic gadgets, pizza delivery, and so on. But who has time to enjoy it? We are too busy working all the time.

*sigh*

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[kz45]

Say company A and company B both produce competing products. Company A produces their product for $50. Company B, however, sets up a sweat shop full of children working night and day. They can sell their product for only $35

what if the kids in the sweatshop are so poor that they either 1) get a job at this company or 2) starve. Sometimes situations are not that simple.

You might be protesting sweatshops, but that might be taking away a job from someone that needs to feed their family for your ideals.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[megarich]

I firmly believe what comes around goes around. If not in this life then the next. It definately sucks though to be in that position or to work for one of these companies

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[berj]

Hmm.. how abou the hypothetical sweatshop charges $48 for its goods and gives the difference to its slaves/employees?

The problem with your line of thinking is that it generally precludes a third option: treat people fairly. Don't act as if slavery/indentured servitude/whatever you want to call it is a gift to these people. Make no mistake. Someone who sets up such an operation is not thinking of the workers at all but merely the bottom line.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[megarich]

Well this is full circle. There are companies that have shady practices to keep costs low but you know what? Guess which company is not paying you enough so as you have to save money whenever and wherever you can.

And then whose to say there are not hidden costs in the more expensive products? All big business' are the same. They all care about high profits nothing else and they'll do what they need to to maintain that high profit margin.

We all support the system because its inevitable in today's world. There's not much you can do if you don't like it but start a revolution or live in the backwoods of montana making your own house, creating your own textiles goods and growing your own food. Good luck with that one.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[SillyNickName4me]

And then whose to say there are not hidden costs in the more expensive products? All big business' are the same. They all care about high profits nothing else and they'll do what they need to to maintain that high profit margin.

True, but such things do often become clear at some point.

We all support the system because its inevitable in today's world. There's not much you can do if you don't like it but start a revolution or live in the backwoods of montana making your own house, creating your own textiles goods and growing your own food. Good luck with that one.

No, there is a lot you can do while still staying within the system.

You are right that profit is the main motivator for companies. This has the nice effect that you can use the system to force companies to be more carefull in what they do by not buying from those that are known to behave badly and instead buying from those who show they don't.

Will it be perfect? not for what I can tell, but it will help quite a bit.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Em Adespoton]

Guess what? There's a LOT you can do. For starters, place your investments in ethical funds. These funds consist of companies that have agreed to be audited for shady business practices.

Secondly, there are quite a few ethical companies out there still, despite the FUD most people spew about unethical practices being inevitable.

Take, for instance coffee and chocolate. You could refuse to purchase any of those two items that doesn't bear the Fair Trade seal. This is just one example, there are many more. Every little bit of purchasing pressure helps, whether you see immediate results or not.

Not all businesses care about profit above everything else -- although it is true for most publicly traded companies who don't have a majority shareholder.

The system is NOT inevitable. Only consumer apathy makes it inevitable, and that depends upon comments like yours. It's true that there will always be unethical employees and managers, and there will always be some unethical businesses. But all it takes is a bit of incentive from consumers and from individuals who make policy in companies, and you have ethical businesses.

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Locke2005]

If it were legal, would you buy the cheapest product knowing that the company making it provides funding for guerilla groups who kidnap children, fill them with drugs and turn them in to child-soldiers? It apparently is "legal"; the product is called "diamonds".

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Emeye]

What if you were buying...i don't know, some random widget. There are two choices of widget, which are the same in quality, but one is cheaper. If that cheaper one finances an anti-whatever-country-you're from terrorist organization, would you buy it anyway, knowing that it pays for bullets that could wind up in your or your family's chests? The environmental/social concerns are the same thing, only less direct. Will you buy a non-environmentaly company's product if you know that you'll get cancer in 30 years because of it? What if they start discriminating against you, just because its cheaper? Besides, the system is too big to screw up. There will always be someone like you, ignorant of the consequenses and companies which share your view of the bottom line.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[rk]

Hmmm, I'm a libertarian and I don't believe any such thing. In fact, I recognize a corporation for what it is: A governmental construct and as such, it is eligible to be created, regulated, modified, and destroyed by said governments. I assert that where a corporate interest collides with individual liberty, that individual liberty should hold sway.

As a libertarian, I believe in free markets, not this corporatist-mercantilist monster that they pass off as free markets. I firmly believe the corporations have too much power and something needs to be done to check this power.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, most economic theories assume that everyone is rational and has perfect information. In your apple for two coins example: I really am better off with the apple than the two coins, because I want the apple and have excess coins. Similarly, you are better off because (since you're selling it) you have an excess apple and a demand for coins (or something which coins can be traded for).

However the big problem with the free market is that it fails to take into account externalities. Let's say that Developer A sells a plot of land to company B in a downtown area. Now Company B builds a manufacturing plant driving the value of the surrounding properties down. Developer A is better off, as is company B, but everyone else is worse off because the parties involved charged a cost of the action (building the plant) onto others who were not involved.

Back onto the topic of advertising, it's a wasteful endeavour. It generates no net benefit overall, unlike most other goods and services. The gain for the producer is offset by the cost to the consumer. Unfortunately, the free market encourages this behaviour, rather than discouraging it as a waste of resources

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[xMilkmanDanx]

I'd mod you up if I had points.

Good job exposing the fallacy of modern economics, that it ignores the hidden costs of just about anything.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[FLEB]

They'll go bankrupt doing that. After few dozen lawsuits, they'll realize this.

(un)Fortunately, one lawsuit, some PR, and a few dozen threatening letters can work just as well.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[turbidostato]

"Well, most economic theories assume that everyone is rational and has perfect information"

Then, most economic theories are wrong. Full stop.

"Back onto the topic of advertising, it's a wasteful endeavour. It generates no net benefit overall"

That's either blatantly false, or if you want to think it is true, just the same can be said about almost every other economic activity, except those on the first sector.

How is it any different a good marketing capaign (defining "good" as the one that makes sells arise) from a well engineered product (understood as the one that better fits buyers desires) or a clever bussinessman that "reads" properly the market situation and so makes his idea a blockbuster?

You can't have it both sides. Either you forget about "perceptions" and then you almost directly end up on a controlled economy (after all, why having half a dozen competing cars in a segment, when a Lada takes you from here to there as well as anyone else? It is tremendously wasteful), or you understand freemarket is all about perceptions and then you should equally accept every part that helps to make those perceptions.

Please note I understand what do you mean, but a "meaning" doesn't make your reasons more "truish". If it where about "meanings" anarchism or marxism would be much better economic systems than free market by far.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

You ARE fucking up the system because of not considering the hidden cost of such cheaper products.
----
I hope you think about that every time you turn on your Dell, Macintosh, HP or whatever it is. You know those computer recycling programs those companies have?

Those old computers don't go to needy students. They go to China where they are dismantled, recycled (as in ground up for raw material), and the toxic waste dumped into rivers, landfills, and open sewers.

"Environmentally Friendly" and "Recycling Program" are not always what they seem...

Could just mean that US soil isn't being polluted.

Waste and environmental damage are not cheap to prevent. If any of these companies were really what they say they are, the products would cost 3x as much.

So go ahead and pay a premium for "Environmentally Friendly" products. Buy all the bullshit you need to make yourself feel better LOL. You aren't doing any more for yourself or anyone else, than the guy that is buying the bargain.

There is no such thing as a "Responsible" company. They do what they need to, to keep up appearances, but that's all. The minute it impacts their bottom line, it's happening in a foreign country such as Mexico or other country which doesn't care much for it's people's, or the environment's welfare, where they can "sweep it under the rug".

Judge the guy all you want, but you aren't doing any better. You are kidding yourself if you think buying something with a recycle or "Environmentally Friendly :)" label makes one bit of a difference. In fact recycling, for the sake of recycling, in some cases causes more waste and toxins than just using new stuff.

You do it because you think it's the right thing to do, and that's awesome. Just don't go around damning people that don't. It's a little nausiating, and a lot self righteous.

"Judge not lest ye be judged". I don't quote the bible a lot, but this is an appropriate circumstance.

l8,
AC

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[SillyNickName4me]

Guess what, I am typing this on a recycled Dell laptop.. and usually I build my own machines. I have worked for a computer manufacteror for some 12 years, and I know a bit about their typical way of doing...

Don't make assumptions my friend.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[QuantumG]

Yes, you can think of a thousand situations where there is actually a 'cost' that is hidden and in those situations it makes sense to consider the complete cost of the product. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people refusing to buy a product in order to change the behaviour of those who make it. I simply don't think this has the desired affect 99% of the time, and if we all did it we'd have no products at all.

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

further proof that walmart is owned by the devil!!! THE DEVIL!!!!

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[critical_v]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix:_Anti-capi talist_Database

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[Xyrus]

This guy got orafucked. Next. ~X~

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[maxpublic]

While I am at it, you can also vote for a sustainable development without spending money by recycling.

The only effective form of recycling is limited to aluminum cans. All other forms actually take more energy and materials (damage to the environment) than just making new products from scratch.

Recycling, on the whole, is a government-mandated piece of feel-good bullshit.

Max

Re:How WWW Can Taint A Corporation

[slargpdx]

"Build a website that catalogues all the evil shit corporations do to employees, so that consumers get to know about the evil shit and take their business elsewhere.

Call it something like, whodotheyfuckoverwiththemoneyyougivethem.com, only shorter, while making sure the word stealth appears nowhere within.)

It it catches on, then corporations would be afraid of how their treatment towards employees could count against the way consumers look at them."

Sorry but it just does not work. If it did every corp out there would treat its employees as human beings. As it is now some actually do treat them well and some dont.

Usually its not even the corp that is the problem, its some insane manager that gets pleasure from others pain. The kind that would invent some idea like locking employees inside of a store, force them to work, then refuse to pay them over time. When that story went public with the lawsuits and criminal charges did it stop people from shopping at the Sprawl Mart? Nope they just kept going in and buying stuff...

The company is doing just fine, still growing.

Dupe!

[jleq]

Read your own fucking site: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/07/04/1115235.shtml ?tid=149&tid=17

Re:Dupe!

[jleq]

The same story is linked to in both posts on Slashdot. Somebody explain to me how that does *not* indicate a dupe?

Re:Dupe!

[elbarono]

slashdot isn't a religion, it's a news site. Go out side and get some fresh air.

hehe...

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, taint.

18 hours, not bad ;)

[Duncan3]

18 hours on this dupe not bad.

And when you draw a ton of attention to yourself for something almost noone can really defend without sounding like a moron, people want you far away from them.

Re:18 hours, not bad ;)

[aichpvee]

When calling people moron you might want to not make up words like "noone". But I guess name calling and misspellings are easier than actually having a reasoned argument.

Re:18 hours, not bad ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

"When calling people moron you might want to not make up words like "noone"."

But then, when trying to be fucking Mr. Chips, you might want NOT TO make up phrases with words in reverse order.

But I guess... whatever.

Re:18 hours, not bad ;)

[Ulven]

Nope, he was right. If you have them your way round, it should be '...might not want to...'

Umm, no

[imstanny]

The fact that he got fired sucks for him. But, the reason you hire a person is because that person will be an asset to the company. If the person becomes a liability, not firing that person is an act of stupidity.

No one has a right to a job. An employer gives the employee a priviledge to work there, and they can take that priviledge away.

Re:Umm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought there was a law against firing someone for their political beliefs,would this not be discrimination ??

Re:Umm, no

[birkhouse]

This is an excellent point concerning non-contracted work. To often people overlook the fact that employers don't have to give particularly salient reasons to dismiss someone from their job. With contracted work, however, the lengths that an employer will go to in order to maintain their autonomy and sometimes whimsicle desires over their employees sometimes border on the unscrupulous. Closer to the topic, does anybody know what Alex Hanff actually said that pissed them off (did anyone actually watch the program)?

Re:Umm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's employed in a "right to work" state, then the employer can fire him for any reason or no reason. On the flip side the employee can leave the company anytime for any reason or no reason.

Re:Umm, no

[ShinmaWa]

Well, since "right to work state" is a US concept and Mr. Hanff is in the UK, this is a rather bogus argument.

For the sake of discussion though, you are in fact wrong. There's this little thing called Title VII that rather blows away your "any reason or no reason" argument.

Re:Umm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.

That was an impressive demonstration of US-american slave mentality. In my neck of the woods I grant the employer the privilege to work for him, not the other way 'round.

Re:Umm, no

[superyanthrax]

Not necessarily true. This is the sort of logic that in the 19th century was used to fire people after they were disabled, say working in a factory, or in mines and was used to create "yellow dog" contracts, or contracts that binded employees to not join unions. Thankfully the government has intervened and banned such unfair employment practices. Therefore, your statement is not completely acceptable even in a capitalist country like the USA.

Re:Umm, no

[Tim C]

There are apparently laws against firing people for political and philosphoical beliefs, yes.

However, he's not been fired for something as trivial as saying "I'm a Tory" or "I think people should be free to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own homes as long as no-one is hurt (at least non-consentually)".

He's gone on national TV and said in effect "copyright and IPR are wrong and should be abolished", while working for a company that relies on those things to make money. That sets him as being opposed to the way in which his employer does business.

It may be a philosophical belief, but it does tend to suggest that he may not be suited to working with his current employer. It's not like his Labour boss has fired him for being a Tory, or prudish boss fired him for being permissive.

Re:Umm, no

[Sneakabout]

Hell yeah! I mean, I hired this guy, seemed nice enough when I interviewed him, turns out he's jewish!

I can tell you, glad I can fire him just like that - I have to sell to some people who really don't like jews - he wass a huge liability!

Wait, you mean that *isn't* acceptable? Woah, what kind of pinko commie state are we living in where you can't fire a guy for something like that...

Re:Umm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

"It may be a philosophical belief, but it does tend to suggest that he may not be suited to working with his current employer."

What utter tripe...

Given your specious reasoning it would then mean that all developers who develop open source software in their spare time are then "not suited" to working for corporations who make money selling closed source software...

It would also mean that everyone who works for defense companies would happily "go postal" any time they felt like it...

His personal beliefs and morals are no business of his employers except where they interfere directly with him performing his paid duties.

Re:Umm, no

[utnow]

When the market provides many workers and few employers (small-scale construction), then workers are granted the privilege of a job. When the market provides few workers and many employers (currently nursing), then the employers are granted the privilege of an employee. It's far from a slave mentality. It's simply knowing where you currently fall in a simple supply and demand curve instead of assuming you have something of value when you do not.

Re:Umm, no

[BizidyDizidy]

Not as bogus as your response. As far as I know, "filesharing supporters" are not a protected civil rights group.

At-will employee's can be fired for ANY reason besides Age, Race, Gender, Religion, or National Origin. Your interjection here was entirely irrelevant to the topic (and yet, +5 informative). Brilliant.

Re:Umm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a direct (and accurate) response to the parent. You really seem to be in a bad mood. Perhaps you should go take a nap.

Re:Umm, no

[salmacis2]

Maybe in the USA, buddy. In the rest of the civilised world, employees have rights.

Re:Umm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

This is only true in places where workers don't know the concept of "solidarity" and let themselves be treated like slaves. No sympathy.

Re:Umm, no

[MidnightBrewer]

The whole "your job is a privilege" mind-washing spiel is just that. A job is a contract entered into between an employer and an employee, whereby one person agrees to pay for the other one's work. If you didn't have skills they need, then why are they paying you? There should be a balance. If you let someone bully you with how "lucky" you are to let them treat you like crap, then you're probably likely to have a pretty miserable career.

Re:Umm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

No one has a right to a job.

Do not forget that you only speak for the U.S. here.

Re:Umm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to stick up for the MAN. Not a lot of that going around recently. The MAN has feelings too ya know! It's hard being a cold unfeeling prick all the time.

Re:Umm, no

[Ham_belony]

Actually, I give the company a privilege to let me work there and sometimes it is a company that really can say they give the privilege to let you work there. But everybody has a right to work. For whom shouldn't matter, but as long as you are able to work, you are a resource of income for the government, so they will not be that happy to see it as a privilege rather than a right they provide.

Re:Umm, no

[rking]

Okay, I have some sympathy with the employer here but would need more information, ideally to see the interview, to know whether I'd side with them or the employee.

Your position, however, I think is dead wrong. You seem to be saying that political or philosophical expression is limited to naming a political party, or possibly to identifying yourself with something that is a policy of a political party. I don't think that's supportable.

Up almost to the end of the article I was thinking that the employer was in the right, because I was taking it that they were firing him for either a history of, or a stated intent to, act in breach of copyright laws. A person who does that is a clear risk to their business.

However, the statement from Tribal Group, however (which may not completely reflect their views on this matter):

"Mr Hanff has declared that he is opposed to copyright and intellectual property laws. Since much of our business is based around the protection of our copyright and intellectual property, we consider our dismissal of Mr Hanff entirely justified and appropriate."

seems to suggest that he was fired for his expression of a political opinion. That would be unacceptable, and as far as I can see it would also be contrary to law.

I'd still need to have more information to decide who I think is right here. One quote form the employer isn't enough. But I'm sure your party-centric way of looking at it is wrong. I shouldn't need to have the agreement of a political party in order for my political views to be protected.

Re:Umm, no

[ifishfortorque]

It's not your right to have a job no matter what. I apologize if this makes you feel badly. If you're a liability to the company, the company ought to fire you. They have no reason to keep you on. In fact, I'd say it's uncivilized for a company to behave otherwise (acting in the employee's interest and not its own).

Re:Umm, no

[tweek]

If you believe in the power of contract then you can understand that the company PROBABLY has a clause in the contract that says something along the lines of "conflict of interest".

Contracts are a powerful thing and require quite a bit of proof to get disolved. Shame on him for not reading his contract carefully enough.

This is, of course, only applicable if indeed the company has a conflict of interest clause.

Re:Umm, no

[hyphz]

It sounds reasonable, but think about the consquences.

By that logic, for instance, ANYBODY who is working in a non-state job, and who criticises global capitalism, should be instantly fired. After all, all businesses operate based on capitalism.

Just because a business produces IP doesn't mean that anyone who criticises copyright is against their business model. If copyright was abolished, it might get replaced with something else that would let those businesses still make money. What would that be? We don't know, it's not invented yet, but there again, we aren't in any danger of actually abolishing copyright right now, are we?

Re:Umm, no

[Ironsides]

"Mr Hanff has declared that he is opposed to copyright and intellectual property laws. Since much of our business is based around the protection of our copyright and intellectual property, we consider our dismissal of Mr Hanff entirely justified and appropriate."

seems to suggest that he was fired for his expression of a political opinion. That would be unacceptable, and as far as I can see it would also be contrary to law.

I guess the question then comes down to this:
Should a company/organization be allowed to fire people who have views that can undermine (sorry, best word I can think of) the company/organization.

For example, would a logging company want to employ someone who actively campaigns against logging? (We can debate the environment impact of logging later, this is just from the employer/employee perspective.)

Would the Labor Party want a registered Conservative and Unionist Party member working for them? (Apologies if people can't register political affiliations like you can in the US).

Would the Church of England be forced to employ an atheist?

Should a police department be forced to employ someone who supports the actions of the (more radical wing of [the ones who blow stuff up]) the IRA (Irish Republican Army)?

I hope you get the idea here.

Re:Umm, no

[cbiltcliffe]

Whimsicle....is that like....frozen whim on a stick? :)

Whimsical, I do believe is the word you were looking for.....

Re:Umm, no

[ShinmaWa]

Wow, you just repeated EXACTLY what I said (Title VII _is_ the Age, Race, etc).

Your interjection here was entirely irrelevant to the topic (and yet, +5 Insightful). Brilliant!

Gotta love hypocrites.

How appearing in the media can taint your career

[Timo_UK]

nobody had noticed if he hadn't touted about it on the news.

please understand

[Anonymous Coward]

now before you go writing me off as a troll please hear me out. i have pleaded. god knows i have tried. its seeming really hopeless..i don't know if i can take it anymore and i am hyperventilating. the dupes on slashdot are way out of hand. something needs to be done (via slashcode, moderation, SOMETHING FFS) to stop the dupes. this is really affecting me. please stop duping.

Re:please understand

[uberdave]

OK, every so often people claim that a story is a dupe. Usually I trust that this is so. There have been times that I remember seeing the original story. However, there have been times that people have called "Dupe" on a story that I haven't seen the original to. I've previously just written it off to a lack of attentiveness on my part. With this story, quite a few people have complained about this story being a dupe. So, I went back and tried to find the "original" story, because I didn't recall reading about this before. So, here's the list of the Slashdot stories for July. I couldn't find the original to this "dupe". (Sorry if this seems a little long winded, Slashdot has a lameness filter that prevents you from posting a bunch of short lines. You have to have an average of 40 characters per line, I guess, so I've had to pad out my post.)

• Your Rights Online: How P2P Can Taint a Career
• Developers: Eastern Ink Painting on a Computer
• Hardware: VOIP, The Traditional Telephony
• Linux: Linux Finds Its Way to More Handheld
• Science: Study Finds Value in Email Spam
• IT: Anatomy of a Hack
• IT: PHP Blogging Apps Open to XML-RPC Exploits
• Games: Man Convicted For Hacking Xbox
• Developers: Harvesting & Reusing Idle Computer Cycles
• Grokster Case Aftermath: Busy times Ahead for EFF
• Hardware: Ray Kurzweil 2001-2003 essays Available as a PDF
• Ask Slashdot: Shopping Online
• Science: Graphics in Science
• In SIlicon Valley: Profits up. Employment Down.
• Science: Cometary Fireworks Go Off Without Hitch
• Star Destroyer Built Before Your Eyes
• Your Rights Online: Owner of the Word Stealth 'Protecting' Rights
• Science: Japan Probes Mysterious Vapor Eruption
• Statler And Waldorf From the Balcony
• Politics: Britain to Pilot GPS Speed Governors
• Developers: Windows Software Ugly, Boring & Uninspired
• Games: Columbine Student on VG Violence
• Science: Cloning In The Animal Kingdom
• Wikimedia to Hold First International Conference
• Cartoon Network Acquires Neon Genesis Evangelon
• Gates Says No to Implants
• Your Rights Online: The Grinch Who Patented Christmas
• Science: Deep Impact on Comet Theory
• Science: 2005 IDEA Awards
• BBC Offers Beethoven Symphonies for Download
• Science: Royal Society Finds Lost Newton Papers
• Science: Vehicle for Cockroaches
• Science: Innovation Getting Slower?
• Science: Cassini's Got Pictures And Data
• Politics: U.S. Won't Let Go of DNS
• Attack of the $1 DVDs
• Science: Tempel 1 Impact Day After Tomorrow
• IT: Microsoft Serious About VoIP
• Science: Next NASA Vehicles To Resemble Shuttles
• IT: SAGE 2004-2005 Salary Survey Announced
• Hardware: Cheap to Audiophile with Simple Hacks
• Your Rights Online: EU Software Patent Directive Getting Hot
• Science: 83,431 Recited Digits of Pi
• Your Rights Online: New Michigan Law Means Kids Can Opt Out of Spam
• IT: Federal Agencies Must Use IPv6 by 2008
• IT: A $251 Million Typo
• Hardware: Japanese Robot Guards to Patrol Shops And Offices
• Science: How Ice Melts
• Interviews: CNN Interviews with Harlan Ellison, Bruce Sterling
• 2005 Looks Like Record Year for Net Growth
• Science: Science's 125 Big Questions
• Politics: Possible Taxes For Broadband Users
• Games: MMOGs Reaching For Casual Gamers
• Your Rights Online: SCO Versus Novell Going All the Way
• Sun's COO Distorts Free In Free Software
• Your Rights Online: Government To Fix Identity Theft?
• Your Rights Online: Sweden Bans Copyrighted Downloading
• Linux: Linux From A CIO's Perspective
• Your Rights Online: Justice O'Connor Retiring
• Your Rights Online: Bittorrent Creator A Digital Pirate?
• Your Rights Online: Microsoft To Pay IBM In Antitr

Re:please understand

[Anonymous Coward]

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/07/04/1115235.shtml ?tid=149&tid=17

Re:please understand

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe you read slashdot too much

Re:please understand

[ZosX]

Yeah, as the AC pointed out the original is also under the Your Rights Online selection. Perhaps you don't have all stories enabled for the front page (not all stories show up by default IIRC). I remember reading this exact same story the day before this dupe was put out.

Slashdot does need to get rid of the dupes. Hell at least check links against links in older stories or something. That would at the very least ferret out the worst, most obvious dupes.

He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[Tezkah]

He didn't get fired for sharing anything. He got fired because he earlier run what seems to have been a BitTorrent tracker in his spare time, was sued over it (in a civil case, not a criminal case), and didn't tell his employer when they interviewed him, so they only found out when he talked about it on a TV show.

He argues that he didn't have to mention it since it doesn't have anything to do with his employer, and I think depending on how the interview went exactly, he's probably right. If they actually asked him about whether there were any civil cases pending against him and he lied and said no, then it's understandable that he got fired (it's not like it's a personal question, after all); but if they didn't, then I really think it's their own fault, and he's right in any case when he says that the whole thing simply doesn't affect his employer in any way.

In any case, it's important to note that he did not himself share any files. He got fired for going into dupe slashdot comments and stealing the +5 moderations.

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[Ray Alloc]

In any case, it's important to note that he did not himself share any files.

Suuuuuuuuuuure he didn't, we all believe him...

--
If I were a fish, I'd be wet duping a reply to a dupe Slashdot comment

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[IchBinEinPenguin]

That question sounds a lot like the "do you plan to overthrow the government" one at customs :-)
At the job interview:
"have you ever done anything that you think will not make us not employ you"
"No" (what, do you think I'm stupid? I'm gonna actually admit to anything here?)
later......
You did XYZ which you didn't disclose at the interview and which we claim would have stopped us from hiring you.
You're fired, not for doing XYZ but for lying at the interview.

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[isorox]

He got fired for going into dupe slashdot comments [slashdot.org] and stealing the +5 moderations. :)

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[Anonymous Coward]

At the job interview:
"have you ever done anything that you think will not make us not employ you"
"No"

So every single thing you've ever done will make them not employ you. Your chances of getting that job are quite slim, I think!

Tip: check those double negations! :)

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is permissible to lie in an interview to protect one's rights. Questions about out-of-work activities would generally be considered over-personal, violating the individual's right to privacy.

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[TheRaven64]

I had to fill in one of those to get security clearance. It asked if I planned to overthrow the government by `violent, political, or other means'. As it happened, I did plan on overthrowing the government by political means - I planned on voting against them. Sadly it didn't work.

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[Anonymous Coward]

> "have you ever done anything that you think will not make us not employ you"
>"No" (what, do you think I'm stupid? I'm gonna actually admit to anything here?)
> later......
> You did XYZ which you didn't disclose at the interview and which we claim would have stopped us from hiring you.
> You're fired, not for doing XYZ but for lying at the interview.

I took the job because I figured you were a company full of bright and talented people who could put my talents to good use. If I'd known you were a bunch of fucktards so clueless that you'd fire someone for doing XYZ, I'd have never applied! I'm countersuing :)

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[DarthVain]

Well I feel bad for him, for anyone that loses their job, however....

He lost his job because he went on TV and made a big freakin' deal out of it. That was an idiot thing to do. So he is not blamless in losing his own job. He should not be blind to such complications.

A analogy would be that if I used to work in the porn industry. If I don't bring that up in an interview, and they hire me, so what, none of their buisness.

However if they hire me as say a Teacher, or perhaps some very 'family values' kind of company, I don't think I would be too surprised that I got canned if I went on TV and went off about the illustrous Porn Jobs that I had been on.

Anyway it just makes sense. Is that a legitmate reason to fire someone? I don't know, thats for the court to decide. They may have to make some kind of restitution, and they may decide that the penalty is worth it. Anyway it shouldn't surprise the idiot that got fired for making public his ties to a related and doubious (spelling?) industry...

my two cents anyway...

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[Anonymous Coward]

Would this be the Alex Hanff that has in the past:

Had his nose broken for going alone to visit an employer and saying 'You employ these people on an illegal wage but they can't do anything because they cannot work legally here' or similar.

Got removed from a student helpdesk post at a University because he kept abusing his rights by giving himself lots of email accounts in the days when having lots of email addresses was good for your karma. And then complained they didn't pay him for shifts he didn't turn up to.

Of course I could be confusing this Alex Hanff with another Alex Hanff who is always on the edge of trouble and only telling a small part of the story to make himself look very good.

Re:He didn't get fired for sharing files...

[IchBinEinPenguin]

If at first you don't succeed.......

Anything you do can taint your career...

[Gopal.V]

Let me repeat - Anything can taint your career .

Whether you stand up to a bully and end up in a fist fight ... whether you challenge your employer's unethical practices ... whether you oppose your government's war mongering ... whatever you do to challenge the authority OF anyone higher up in the food chain- doesn't matter if it was legal , ethical or moral on your part.

You can get fired for anything that anybody can use to attack you and your companies' reputation. It's sad, but true - but at least I hope this guy will get a better job at a more appreciative employer.

Re:Anything you do can taint your career...

[pugnatious]

yup, society prefers sheeple, that's why there's so many of them.

Re:Anything you do can taint your career...

[zornorph]

Let me repeat - Anything can taint your career .

Employers say they want people who challenge the status quo, think outside the box, etc etc, yet when someone actually does this, they get fired. Companies only want soldiers - do as you are told, nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Anything you do can taint your career...

[greenrd]

Correction: capitalist society prefers sheeple.

(Totalitarian societies prefer sheeple even more, of course.)

Re:Anything you do can taint your career...

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

Because communism, for example, _thrives_ on individuality, right?? Monarchies and Theocracies too...

Perhaps you could enlighten us by pointing out a human socio-political structure that doesn't prefer "sheeple"?

The Real Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this open some eyes and increase interest in alternative (Linux, Mac) offerings?

Re:The Real Question

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

you could open my anus up for some goatse action!111

Re:The Real Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but only if we watch his firing on Windows Media Player Version 9.0 or greater.

Re:The Real Question

[Anonymous Coward]

ZOMG yes! A new firing system based on Linux or OS X that will send your soon-to-be-axed employee a message saying "You've Got Unemployment" in a hearty and lovable voice! /me is too lazy to go actually make this... instead I will write this idea down, wait until someone else does it, then sue them and use this as an example of prior art...

Interesting Legal Question

[Tezkah]

To what extent can an opinion about intellectual property (or any other law) form grounds for dismissal?
IMHO it is the right, indeed the obligation of anyone living in a democracy to question the laws that govern them. Intellectual property laws are increasingly valid targets for such scepticism.

There would be an uproar in most countries if someone was fired for expressing their opinion on abortion, or religion, why should someone's opinion on dupe law be any different?

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[Tezkah]

If the company was an abortion clinic and the opinion expressed by the employee was anti-abortion, then there would be no uproar if they were fired.

He expressed anti copyright and IP views, while working for a firm that relies on copyright and IP. In addition he was only working there for a week, all companies insist on a probabtion period of at least a month to see if your face fits, with instant dismissal if you don't. So he is going to have trouble winning his case.

Yes it isn't nice that your freedom of speech is curtailed by your employer, but there are plenty of precedents for it - from the aforementioned abortion example, through to the Police in the UK at least not being allowed to express racist views even when not on duty, or the Slashdot editors not being able to remove dupes in their spare time.

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[Anonymous Coward]

If the company was an abortion clinic and the opinion expressed by the employee was anti-abortion, then there would be no uproar if they were fired.

If the employee had not allowed their opinion to affect their work performance, then I see no justification for firing them, and I strongly suspect that the law wouldn't either.

He expressed anti copyright and IP views, while working for a firm that relies on copyright and IP.

Ah, so you can only be fired if your boss happens to disagree with you. Right...

My firm relies on copyright, and I am extremely critical of intellectual property law. I believe that many aspects of intellectual property law hurt my company.

all companies insist on a probabtion period of at least a month to see if your face fits, with instant dismissal if you don't.

Um, wrong, mine doesn't. Either way, having a probation period is not a license to fire someone for whatever reason you like.

through to the Police in the UK at least not being allowed to express racist views even when not on duty.

Ah, because criticising intellectual property law is just like expressing a racist view. Is this were you accuse me of being just like Hitler? Or, with equally irrational menace, of posting dupes?

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[DaveV1.0]

If the employee had not allowed their opinion to affect their work performance, then I see no justification for firing them, and I strongly suspect that the law wouldn't either.

This is iffy reasoning. Would a bank be justified in firing someone who admitted that they believed embezzlement was not a crime, or that banks were evil because they charged interest and therefore it is good to steal from banks?

Ah, so you can only be fired if your boss happens to disagree with you. Right...

You have this backwards. It is not that the boss does not share this person's opinion, but rather that this person's opinion is contrary to the company's opinion and what those in charge of the company believe to be in the company's best interests.

Either way, having a probation period is not a license to fire someone for whatever reason you like.

During the probationary period, you can be let go for pretty much any reason. The company just has to say "We don't think you are a good fit." He pretty much said he does not believe in the something the company considers critical to its success. Doesn't sound like good fit to me.

In this case, the company can say "He holds views contrary to the company and that are contrary to the best interests of the company." Also, the company can state that if they had known about the website in advance, they would not have offered him the position. I do not believe he will win his case. It seems to me he must prove that his stance is a "philisophical belief" and that the belief is covered under the laws sited and that he was fired for holding said belief and not for some other reason. I do not believe it will be an easy thing.

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[RickHunter]

Under the Bush administration, any politically inconvenient opinion is grounds for dismissal. Just look at what they've been doing to scientists.

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[Jackmn]

The individual in question stands for ideals that would obliterate the company were they realised. The company has absolutely no reason to employ such an individual.

Ah, because criticising intellectual property law is just like expressing a racist view.

You can't have it both ways. Either an employee is free to express whatever viewpoints s/he believes in without fear of reprisal by his/her employer, or the company is allowed to fire an employee for expressing an opinion.

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Havind opinion != voicing opinion on BBC

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[1u3hr]

The individual in question stands for ideals that would obliterate the company were they realised. The company has absolutely no reason to employ such an individual.

You could say the same about hard-line communists, or anarchists. Yet many work mundane 9-5 jobs while expressing their political views in their own time. As long as someone does the jobe they're paid for that should be it. They might nor be promoted, but that's another story.

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Name names, give links to relevant articles, don't just talk out of your ass.

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[Concern]

This is iffy reasoning. Would a bank be justified in firing someone who admitted that they believed embezzlement was not a crime, or that banks were evil because they charged interest and therefore it is good to steal from banks?

It looks like we used abstraction to dance around common sense.

Firing a bank-robbing-advocate at a bank or a pedophilia-advocate at a nursery school are not the same as firing a Republican at a Democrat-run company or a Catholic at a Protestant-run company. Yet you make them the same.

Yes, Catholics believe Protestants will burn in hell (and used to light them on fire for public entertainment/education), and Republicans may believe Democrats are traitors, but we do look past these differences every day and all work together.

It's not shocking or strange - it just means your attempt at relativism is wrong and there's another test involved here.

Copyright laws are in extraordinary, epic-making flux; copyright doctrine we've lived with for hundreds of years is being rewritten, and in every case so far, entirely in favor of special interests. Advocating the DMCA or software patentability is more controvertial than many other reforms I've heard. Yet I wouldn't fire someone for advocating the DMCA or software patents, even if that would destroy my business. Those positions, by the way, do harm everyone... Software Patents harm any software developer, and the DMCA threatens security researchers with immediate jail time. We all just accept that this is one of those issues that's up for debate, and that we'll allow follow the rules while we advocate for change. "Democracy," in other words.

Comparing some P2P advocacy in the off hours to your scenarios of embezzlement is completely absurd. If he gave any indication he's speaking for his company, that's one thing, and obviously if he has a "criminal history" that's another.

Otherwise I maintain that just advocating a liberal copyright regime on TV doesn't meet the standard for "unacceptable philosophical beliefs" that would justify dismissal. Well, do you really think such speech shows you means to do some harm to your employer? Have you looked at the double-standards, then? Do you really think such an advocate really will foul some potential business by their very presence? I don't know... kind of doubt anyone knew who this guy worked for until they fired him.

Re:Interesting Legal Question

[bbc]

"He expressed anti copyright and IP views"

Did he? Did you watch the programme? What did he say?

For all the entitlests out there...

[Anonymous Coward]

...an employer hires people to make products (or do things). It does not make products to hire people.

Misleading summary

[Tim C]

This really has nothing to do with P2P other than that was the subject on which the guy was speaking. What got him let go was his announcement (on national TV) that he is against copyright and intellectual property. From the Gruaniad article:

Mr Hanff has declared that he is opposed to copyright and intellectual property laws. Since much of our business is based around the protection of our copyright and intellectual property, we consider our dismissal of Mr Hanff entirely justified and appropriate.

I work for a telecoms company. If I went on national TV and decried telephony, saying that everyone should communicate face to face or by writing letters, I'd expect my company to start to wonder if I was entirely suitable as an employee, too.

Re:Misleading summary

[_Sprocket_]

I work for a telecoms company. If I went on national TV and decried telephony, saying that everyone should communicate face to face or by writing letters, I'd expect my company to start to wonder if I was entirely suitable as an employee, too.

What do you do for that telecom company? If you're Public Relations, I would agree. But what if you're a system administrator? Does a belief in alternative communications systems really affect your ability to maintain the systems under your charge?

Likewise, did Mr. Hanff's belief in reformation (or even removal) of Copyright and associated "intellectual property" laws really affect his duties within the company? Or is this simply a personal call by someone within Management with an axe to grind against the opinions expressed by Mr. Hanff?

Also, keep in mind that Mr. Hanff seems to believe it was about possible pending litigation. From the article:

Newsnight interviewed him because in March he was served with legal papers by the Motion Picture Association of America for running a website called DVD-Core that pointed users to files of movies, some illegally copied, distributed using BitTorrent file-sharing software. It was this his employer objected to, saying he should have disclosed it when interviewed.

And this may be a legitimate concern. If Mr. Hanff is required to get a security clearance to work on Government contracts, legal entanglements may become an issue. But even then, this particular case is questionable. And it certainly isn't in line with the other statements from higher company management.

Re:Misleading summary

[killjoe]

So if you are a haliburton employee and you are against the war in iraq you should be fired? If you are a govt employee and you are against the war in iraq or you publicly state that you think George Bush is an idiot and a religious fundamendalist zealot you should be fired?

You have just stated that it's OK for employees to fire people for holding an opinion contrary to the opinion of the "corporation". That is a ridiculus assertion. I hope to got this guy sues the hell of out them.

Re:Misleading summary

[hhghghghh]

He isn't against any and all copyright protection, that's the company's line.

Though even if he was, in a democratic society, should government contracts not be awarded to companies who have an employee who has a desire to change the law? Isn't wanting to change the law, well, politics? And Government cracking down on dissenting political views with tax money, isn't that a bit shady?

Re:Misleading summary

[slashdotnickname]

For someone championing individual opinions, you sure parrot the extreme liberal talking-points pretty well.

Do you even know what a "religious fundamendalist zealot" is? I've yet to read about Bush hanging Laura in the name of God for some minor mistake she made.

Re:Misleading summary

[cahiha]

You have just stated that it's OK for employees to fire people for holding an opinion contrary to the opinion of the "corporation". That is a ridiculus assertion.

No, he stated that it's OK to fire people for publicly stating an opinion that is contrary to the business interests of the corporation.

Is that ridiculous? It may be, or it may not be. It depends on the nature of the statement, the nature of the business, and the relationship between the two.

Re:Misleading summary

[cahiha]

Do you even know what a "religious fundamendalist zealot" is? I've yet to read about Bush hanging Laura in the name of God for some minor mistake she made.

You can be a "religious fundamentalist zealot" and be completely non-violent. Religious fundamentalism is about a hare-brained and intolerant interpretation of scriptures, not about homicidal tendencies (although one may lead to the other).

(Besides, has Laura even made any such "minor mistakes"?)

Re:Misleading summary

[The Mayor]

So if you are a haliburton employee and you are against the war in iraq you should be fired?

If you throw in speaking about it in public (and I think the grandparent post implied that), then you've got a situation where a person is "publicly stating an opinion that is contrary to the business interests of the corporation". Is that acceptable to fire someone that voices such an opinion? I don't think so. I think the grandparent was right on target with their statement.

However, if the person was working in a right-to-work state in the U.S., then I believe the employer has the right to fire that person for any reason so long as it is not discriminitory. I don't believe this would count as discriminitory. I believe this argument was used as the justification for the private corporation that fired an employee during the U.S. presidential election primaries because the person attended a Bush rally wearing anti-Bush shirts.

Re:Misleading summary

[nagora]

Do you even know what a "religious fundamendalist zealot" is? I've yet to read about Bush hanging Laura in the name of God for some minor mistake she made.

If Bush is religious I wonder what religion it is. Satanism perhaps; there's certainly no sign of Christian values in his actions.

Perhaps, and I'm going out on a limb here, he only says all that stuff about God because there's votes in it and religious people will believe any old shit (eg, the bible/koran/tora/dianetics)?

TWW

Re:Misleading summary

[Tim Browse]

I've yet to read about Bush hanging Laura in the name of God for some minor mistake she made.

She probably keeps telling him to look to the plank in his own eye.

Re:Misleading summary

[Tim C]

And Government cracking down on dissenting political views with tax money, isn't that a bit shady?

Where does it say that the government has anything to do with this? The company is claiming that it's afraid that ahving this guy working for them after what he's said might harm their chances of getting government work, that's all.

Re:Misleading summary

[Tim C]

Does a belief in alternative communications systems really affect your ability to maintain the systems under your charge?

If I become sufficiently militant about it, yes, it might. Would you want to take that chance with your critical infrastructure?

If Mr. Hanff is required to get a security clearance to work on Government contracts, legal entanglements may become an issue.

I don't remember the exact details of the clearance process, but I would be amazed if any such things weren't looked at very hard indeed. Certainly you have to give details of your partner, immediate family, previous addresses, etc. They take that sort of thing pretty seriously, even just for SC status.

Re:Misleading summary

[Tim C]

The guy has essentially said, on national TV, "the way in which my employer makes money is wrong and should be abolished." You think that doesn't make him unsuitable to be an employee?

You have just stated that it's OK for employees to fire people for holding an opinion contrary to the opinion of the "corporation".

No I didn't. I said that it's ok (at least in some circumstances) to fire people for making public statements that go against the company's business interests. If I bad mouthed my friends, I wouldn't expect to keep them, why should my job be any different?

That is a ridiculus assertion.

At least that we agree on

Re:Misleading summary

[MidnightBrewer]

Actually, George Bush fired people within the CIA for not supporting him, so apparently, yeah, you can. :)

Re:Misleading summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't remember the exact details of the clearance process, but I would be amazed if any such things weren't looked at very hard indeed.

In the US, for a secret, it's pretty basic. No convictions, no drugs, nothing really obvious, basiclally. TS is a little tougher and while for the most part I can't see a civil suit causing a problem for getting a TS, this one does have some possible criminal charges related to it, given the DOJ's new "War on IP infringement"

Given that no mention of clearances in any of the articles, just that they objected to his stance on copyright, I sort of doubt that has anything to do with it.

Re:Misleading summary

[Anonymous Coward]

no it's not, corporations are entities in themselves.

Joe Bloggs Inc.

is Like an entirely different Individual.
Human being.

But with lots of lovely red tape surrounding it.
Company policies are different for each

Corporation.

But basically, if you don't ahead to the company
policy ... you get fired.

Example : I hacked the schools computers.
(simple trojan attack).

They didn't like it, I got suspended.
Fair enough.

Same applies here.

I don't understand what the fuss is about.

Re:Misleading summary

[TheRaven64]

If you are a govt employee and you are against the war in iraq or you publicly state that you think George Bush is an idiot and a religious fundamendalist zealot you should be fired?

In the UK, at least, civil servants are not allowed to publicly express political opinions of any kind.

Re:Misleading summary

[cahiha]

Is that acceptable to fire someone that voices such an opinion? I don't think so.

Think about a corporation having 20 employees struggling to get a new product out and getting more money. Now, one of its employees gives an interview and says "our product sucks; it can't even do (fill in whatever), and it won't be out in time either". I think it's justified firing that employee (whether it's legal is another question).

If the company is Microsoft or IBM, then it's a different matter. A Microsoft employee should arguably be able to say "I think Word sucks" without getting fired if he says it in a clearly private capacity. But if he's the head of the Word development team giving an interview saying "Word sucks", that would be justification for firing him.

I believe this argument was used as the justification for the private corporation that fired an employee during the U.S. presidential election primaries because the person attended a Bush rally wearing anti-Bush shirts.

That behavior is unrelated to workplace conduct or company products, so I think that's a bad justification.

If the employee wore a "Bush sucks" T-shirt to work, then the company can fire him, provided they also fire any employee wearing a "Kerry sucks" T-shirt. The justification would be "political messages disrupt workplace harmony". But the company has no business selecting one or the other political message (unless it's, say, a company with an explicitly partisan purpose).

Re:Misleading summary

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a huge difference between holding an opinion and stating it in various forms and media.

Re:Misleading summary

[Martin Spamer]

to start to wonder if I was entirely suitable as an employee, too.

Wondering is ok, even following disiplinary procedures is ok, summary dissmissal is not.

Re:Misleading summary

[Relgar]

It's unfortunate, but any employee is automatically assumed to represent the company to some degree by the external public. It shouldn't be so, but the public mind isn't that discriminating.

Consider the blogs by technical employees of big name companies like Microsoft or Google. Even if it is just their own personal opinion, I'm sure the execs would be upset if the blogger proclaimed such-and-such upcoming product sucks, and rightfully so: it'd be all over /. in a second that some MS employee is making negative comments about the next version of their product. Do you think everyone would carefully consider that these are personal opinions and shouldn't be assumed to be the company's view?

Or to phrase it differently, the mass mind loves and believes anecdotes, even if they make no sense in the larger context. A single data point (one employee in a company) will have a disproportionate influence.

Re:Misleading summary

[killjoe]

He did no such thing. He commented on the state of the legal system and he got fired because his company profits from the state of the legal system as it is today.

The correct analogy goes like this. An employee of a drug testing company publicly states that marijuana should be legalized and gets fired because his company makes a lot of money testing for that drug.

It's wrong no matter how you look at it. Lets hope that it's also illegal in the UK and that the corporation has to pay through the nose in fines and penalties.

Re:Misleading summary

[killjoe]

That's crap. The corporations interest does not usurp your god given right to express yourself. This guy is commenting on the law, just because the corporation makes money of the current sorry state of the copyright system it does not give them the right to punish every employee who disagrees with the way copyrights are being run.

Lets hope they pay throught the nose for this.

Re:Misleading summary

[bbc]

"What got him let go was his announcement (on national TV) that he is against copyright and intellectual property."

How do you know he is against these things? It's not mentioned in the article.

Re:Misleading summary

[Wile_E_Peyote]

So if you are a haliburton employee and you are against the war in iraq you should be fired?

I am willing to bet that if they were a recognizable person at Haliburton and went on a national television show expressing anti-war views, they would be looking for new employment. Especially if they are at-will (at-will employment can be terminated without reason).

If you are a govt employee and you are against the war in iraq or you publicly state that you think George Bush is an idiot and a religious fundamendalist zealot you should be fired?

Goverment employees are a whole different thing, you can't really reasonably compare them to private employees...

You have just stated that it's OK for employees to fire people for holding an opinion contrary to the opinion of the "corporation". That is a ridiculus assertion. I hope to got this guy sues the hell of out them.

He wasn't fired for having that opinion; he was fired for sharing that opinion on national television. Since it is a technology company, I imagine he is not the only person at the company that has that view.

Re:Misleading summary

[Locke2005]

Should I be fired for being married to a black woman because my employer beleives "misogyny is unnatural?" And if a black employee disagrees with the predominant corporate sentiment that "blacks are inferior," he should be fired too, right? And we can't have people wearing crosses, stars of david, head scarves, or yin/yang symbols to work either, because "religious messages disrupt workplace harmony..."

You've got the draw the line somewhere on employees being allowed to express personal opinions. I say the only criterion should be "Does this opinion adversely affect the employee's ability to do their job?" In this specific case, I see no evidence that being opposed to copyright affected his job performance in any way.

Re:Misleading summary

[VistaBoy]

Should I be fired for being married to a black woman because my employer beleives "misogyny is unnatural?"

What does hatred of women have to do with interracial marriages?

Furthermore, the US government has already "drawn the line" on what companies can't discriminate against through the passing of several laws. This page on the EEOC's website outlines it pretty well.

Re:Misleading summary

[Locke2005]

Sigh... you're correct. The word I was looking for was "miscegenation", not "misogyny". My bad.

By the way, I called the EEOC with a complaint once and was told "the EEOC only handles complaints about treatment of employees. You're a contractor, they can discriminate against you all they want!" or words to that effect.

Re:Misleading summary

[_Sprocket_]

It's unfortunate, but any employee is automatically assumed to represent the company to some degree by the external public. It shouldn't be so, but the public mind isn't that discriminating.

That's why when you state personal opinion, you take pains to avoid connecting your opinion to your employer. Did this person note who is employer is? Did he communicate in any method that linked him to his employer (i.e. using an email address from his employer's domain or using a signiture block including his employer)? Did he directly criticize his employer? I don't see anything that would imply any of this happened.

I agree with what you're saying. But I don't see it as applicable in this case.

Re:Misleading summary

[cahiha]

You've got the draw the line somewhere on employees being allowed to express personal opinions. I say the only criterion should be "Does this opinion adversely affect the employee's ability to do their job?"

That's not where we draw the line (nor do I think we should). We draw the line at "does it affect the company bottom line adversely".

Your wife's race usually doesn't affect the company bottom line adversely. However, even if it did, race and a few other factors are explicitly special cases under the law.

And we can't have people wearing crosses, stars of david, head scarves, or yin/yang symbols to work either, because "religious messages disrupt workplace harmony..."

I think that would be a very sensible policy, actually, as long as it is applied consistently to all religions within the workplace. However, like race, society has decided that this is a special case. You'd have to ask an employment lawyer, though, to find out what is legal and what is not in that area.

Welcome to the harsh reality of the real world

[stox]

It sucks, but it is within the rights of the employer, especially a small one. Take a look at the other side of the fence. I sure did after a scary experience not too long ago. The small company, I founded with a friend, was in need of a junior sysadm. A relatively new partner to the company found what appeared to be a good fit. We made and offer. and he accepted, but, THANK GOD!!!, decided to take a later counter-offer from his current employer. A few months later, he marched into the Illinois Capital building, and blew a security guard away.

Fortunately, I was spared the decision, but if I had to, I would have dropped him like a hot potato. The stigma it would have put upon my company would have been devastating.

Re:Welcome to the harsh reality of the real world

[Anonymous Coward]

better get your priorities straight, you're lucky he didn't walk in and shoot YOU over some triviality had he been hired. Money is no good if you are six feet under.

Re:Welcome to the harsh reality of the real world

[Anonymous Coward]

A few months later, he marched into the Illinois Capital building, and blew a security guard away.

That's awesome. But he was only able to score one point before his game was up? Lame-o.

Re:Welcome to the harsh reality of the real world

[Concerned Onlooker]

The stigma it would have put upon my company would have been devastating.

So, you're saying that just because an employee murdered someone you'd fire him? Just like that? Where's the loyalty these days?

Re:Welcome to the harsh reality of the real world

[Anonymous Coward]

better get your priorities straight, you're lucky he didn't walk in and shoot YOU over some triviality had he been hired.

sounds like he had his priorities straight. didn't trust the guy, didn't want to let him in the door. but didn't want to be the one who locked him out, either.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Synonymous Howard writes: "please listen before writing me off as a troll. i have pleaded and its seeming really hopeless..i don't know if i can take it anymore and i am hyperventilating. something needs to be done about the dupes on slashdot. they're are way out of hand. users are really affected. please stop duping."

uk police

[Anonymous Coward]

"Police in the UK at least not being allowed to express racist views even when not on duty"

So has any Black cop there ever been fired for railing against Whitey? Or is this something that is just hypocritically applied to Crackers? Are the PC apologists too scared (or laden with White Guilt) to hold the Colored man to this standard?

Re:uk police

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it has been applied to non-white police. Although, the cases I am aware of were actually brought by racist white police to try and remove asian police officers from the force.

Re:uk police

[Anonymous Coward]

"So has any Black cop there ever been fired for railing against Whitey?"

Never fired, although I believe at least some accusations have been brought forwards.

"Or is this something that is just hypocritically applied to Crackers?"

Pretty much yes. Here in Britain this PC crap has gone so far that recently a white member of the police force was so afraid of being labelled a "racist" that he ignored accusations that an asain member of the police force had sexually assualted someone.

This PC crap extends further than the police force - for example Nick Griffin (leader of the BNP) is currently being tried for "incitement to racial hatred" - because he recited sections of the Koran at a private meeting of BNP members. On the other hand, a well known muslim (sorry can't remember his name think it began with an O?) said to kill all non-muslims publically and he hasn't been investigated at all - and in fact is given £20,000 a year of our tax money!

When racist anti-white attacks occur, it is never covered in the media, but if whites attack a non-white it's covered for the next 10 years. If it is covered, it's reported as a "homophobic" attack even when the victim isn't homosexual.

With the blatent anti-white state of Britain currently it's no wonder that groups like the British National Party, National Front, and Combat 18 exist today.

Sad fact.

[Bananatree3]

This is one of the very sad issues with today's corprate atmosphere. People have been laid off, fired, etc. just because they got bad press. The corprate string-pullers of the company echelon don't like the fact that an employee of theirs got some sort of bad attention from the newspapers, and so they lay them off as a "liability", even if they are in reality a model hard working, smart employee. This kind of "liability" crap is just sick.

Re:Sad fact.

[imthesponge]

Yes, but the person in the article was fired for talking about something non-work-related because they didn't like his opinion.

Re:Sad fact.

[AHumbleOpinion]

Yes, but the person in the article was fired for talking about something non-work-related because they didn't like his opinion.

You read the article? "Mr Hanff has declared that he is opposed to copyright and intellectual property laws. Since much of our business is based around the protection of our copyright and intellectual property, we consider our dismissal of Mr Hanff entirely justified and appropriate."

Re:Sad fact.

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm., I should set the record straight here. I have never at any point in my entire life (to my recollection) EVER stated that I don't agree with IP or Copyright laws. My stance during this ENTIRE situation (which has been going on for several months) is that the tactics of the MPAA going after individuals with no money in order to try and scare people is going to cause social harm and put children into poverty as well as (eventually) probably cause someone to take their life due to losing everything after action by the MPAA.

I believe the existing IP and Copyright laws need serious review since they allow companies like the MPAA to carry out what can be considered as nothing less than Corporate Terrorism. I believe in Fair Use and furthermore I believe that many of the people who used dvdr-core for sharing files were non US and lived in countries where the copyright and IP laws are very very different to the US.

Alexander Hanff

Re:Sad fact.

[benjamindees]

"Mr Hanff has declared that he is opposed to big corporations owning everything. Since we are a big corporation, and much of our business is based around our owning everything, we consider our dismissal of Mr Hanff entirely justified and appropriate."

Later on.

[headkase]

I hope he wins a nice settlement once it go's through arbitration and he wins an unfair dismissal case. (If he does that is).

It's called fuckedcompany.com

[xenocide2]

And to a lesser (and former) extent, fatbabies.com. Not that anybody stops purchasing from them, but they might stop sending resumes. I don't think a site can attract consumers interested in the fair treatment of the people involved in making it; we just don't care. What would probably work better is consumer complaints, along the lines of resellerratings.

Two words (a series of)

[Ray Alloc]

Severance package,

Abusive dismissal,
... And after that:
Settlement fee
And of course
Punitive damages.

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Osrin]

In the UK any employee who has been in their role for less than 13 weeks has zero protection.

The mistake here, if there was one, was the employer giving a reason for dismissing the employee... they should have just thanked him for his time and sent him on his way.

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Ngwenya]

The mistake here, if there was one, was the employer giving a reason for dismissing the employee... they should have just thanked him for his time and sent him on his way.

Nah, that one doesn't fly either. If an employee can convince a tribunal that there was an implicit reason (and that a reasonable person could determine that reason), then it's the same as saying "We don't want you socialist/feminist/black/gay/Jewish (take your pick) types here. You're fired". I do note that they offered him 3 months wages as a settlement. Frankly, I think he should take it. Even if he wins at a tribunal, the chances that he'd get more than that are very, very slim. I mean, how do you prove that you would have worked for them like a good slave for 20+ years?

You're 99.9% correct about the probationary period though. The only protection you have is not be be fired for discriminatory reasons. And, frankly, that's a bitch to prove. In effect, you're asking a court to accept that what you think someone else thought is illegal. Unsurprisingly, employment tribunals don't take that course lightly.

--Ng

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Durzel]

As much as I think the company is actually in the right here in view of the circumstances, them offering him a revised 3 month severance package when he had only been with the company a week kinda sounds like even they aren't sure whether what they've done is legal.

They may have shot themselves in the foot legally with that offer.

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Ngwenya]

offering him a revised 3 month severance package when he had only been with the company a week kinda sounds like even they aren't sure whether what they've done is legal.

I think you're right. (Hence my advice to Hanff would be to take the money and run). However, as much lurking on Groklaw and IP-Wars has shown, the last place you want to end up in would be a courtroom (even an industrial tribunal style courtroom). Weird random crap happens there. So it may be that the company is simply saying "Look, we can either give this to him now, or pay possibly more to the lawyers tomorrow. Ah, screw it. Offer him the cash, and damn his eyes."

I'm no lawyer, so I can't say who is in the right legally, but I suspect that both parties have been a bit silly in this matter. Yeah, freedom of speech and all, but I don't think its unreasonable (especially as a new hire) to say to your employer that you're going to appear on Newsnight and speak on the following topics. And then they can't claim they were blindsided, or they can ask you not to appear. Similarly, I think that for an employer to be that paranoid about the political opinions of their employees and how they might play with potential customers is skirting the edge of reason.

I mean, I've appeared on TV, saying that the government's plans for key escrow sucked, but my employer (HP - but speaking in personal capacity here, etc, etc) was told beforehand. They might have thought that future government contracts were at risk, but they took the view that it was an acceptable risk for HP to employ people with more than one opinion. But the relative risks to HP versus a smaller operation are way different.

--Ng

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Anonymous Coward]

My employer did know I was being interiewed and why. They even allowed me to finish work 45 minutes early to give the interview.

They were not blind sided and even if they were, they have abused my rights and have no chance in court.

Secondly, the revised severance was not an offer, I had no choice whether or not to accept it, I was told I WOULD be getting 3 month severance instead of the 1 week. I explained I would still be taking legal action and after that they still sent me a letter stating I WOULD get 3 months severance.

They are wrong, they know they are wrong and they were hoping that money would be my only objective (making them wrong again). My main objective is quite simple:

In the UK at the moment it seems all too common that parents are appearing in the press and media for being sued due to their children downloading. These people probably also work for an employer, furthermore these parents generally settle with the relevant **AA to avoid heavy legal fees in fighting the case. My worry is that other companies will think it is ok to fire these people because of the media/press attention they have received.

By making my case public and protecting my rights with legal action, I am sending a clear message on two fronts;

1. To employers. If you abuse the human rights of your employees you will be held liable and will pay heavy consequences.

2. To employees. Your rights are protected by both continental and national law, but those rights will only be enforced if you apply the appropriate action provided to you by the legislators. In other words, fight for your rights.

Alexander Hanff

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Durzel]

The problem is, you went on TV and to all intents and purposes openly supported what is by current Law an illegal practice.

If I went on TV and proudly proclaimed that I stole from shops on a regular basis, or even that I sympathised with those that did I would expect my employer to have a very dim view of my ethics from thereon.

The difference in this case from what I can gather is that your views on copyright infringement are in DIRECT contrast with the business objectives of the company you work(ed) for. It's not like you went on TV and expressed a view on cannabis legalisation. Your views as shown on the programme go against the principal business model of the company.

There is no tenable position they could've maintained by letting you continue to work there.

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no tenable position they could've maintained by letting you continue to work there.

What, like assuming that people are capable of separating their personal and work lives? I guess in these days of corporate slavedrivers pushing to rid the world of overtime pay so they can send their wage slaves to grind away at 80 hour workweeks, they can't even believe that their employees HAVE a personal life, much less one they can keep separate. Should Smith and Wesson fire anyone who doesn't own a gun? Should Boeing fire people who are pacifists, because their existance might hurt the chances they'll get government war contracts? Or better yet, do you think the government even cares?

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Durzel]

Smith & Wesson should absolutely fire someone who chooses to use a gun (whether it be made by S&W, or anyone else) in their personal life to shoot people indiscriminately, and then go on TV to tell the World about it.

Are you incapable of seeing the conflict of interests between someone saying they don't agree with copyright/IPR, and a company whose business depends on copyright/IPR ?

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Anonymous Coward]

You twisted my idea in some bizarre way.

Someone who doesn't believe in guns wouldn't go around shooting people. They wouldn't own a gun, but they would perhaps send letters to their representatives promoting gun control and show up on TV supporting such gun control laws. Smith and Wesson should fire that person regardless of how well they perform their job duties?

(As for why such a person would work there, perhaps its the major employer in the city and they have to feed their kids. Or perhaps they believe that cops should have guns and only works the assembly line for the police models. Or a dozen other reasons that separates their private desires from their business performance.)

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Ngwenya]

The problem is, you went on TV and to all intents and purposes openly supported what is by current Law an illegal practice.

I'm sorry - was this a response to my post? I went on TV to offer my views on a (thankfully abandoned) government proposal to require all crypto keys to be surrendered to the UK government. I said it was a terrible idea, and many IT sector employers thought so too. (Note: I did not, and do not, speak for HP, my employer, in this instance). By the law then, and the law now there is no requirement to escrow cryptographic keys. Hence I was in no way advocating law breaking. However, it could be argued that HP employees expressing personal opinions on UK government IT policies could have harmed their chances of securing future contracts. HP's management took the opinion that my rights to free expression took precedence over any precautionary silence rule. If, on the other hand, they had asked me to withdraw from the programme, I would have done so, but it would have damaged my faith in HP. As it was, it reinforced my belief that HP was a good place to work.

The difference in this case from what I can gather is that your views on copyright infringement are in DIRECT contrast with the business objectives of the company you work(ed) for. It's not like you went on TV and expressed a view on cannabis legalisation. Your views as shown on the programme go against the principal business model of the company.

Honestly, I think there is a misunderstanding here. I think that current IP laws are being misused by patent trolls, trademark vultures, copyright abusers, but I don't believe in copyright, patent or trademark abolition. I've never said that I do, nor have I ever advocated widespread breaking of copyright laws. I think that the pendulum of IP holders interests versus the popular need for artistic and scientific freedom to share has swung too far to the copyright holders, but you do me wrong to ascribe to me a belief in wholesale abolition and disobedience of the law.

Was there some anonymous post in the middle here to which you were responding?

--Ng

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Ngwenya]

Was there some anonymous post in the middle here to which you were responding?

Deepest apologies - Just seen the Hanff post to which you were responding.

Mod the parent out of existence. It's a mistake.

Sorry, Durzel. My mistake.

--Ng

Re:Two words (a series of)

[Ngwenya]

1. To employers. If you abuse the human rights of your employees you will be held liable and will pay heavy consequences.

I'm not sure that it's wise to comment on a public forum about upcoming litigation.

However, since you started it, what human right do you feel to have been violated? The HRA has very little to say in terms of what private individuals or companies can do to one another. It's mostly about what a government can do (or not) to its population. No doubt your legal adviser will clarify such matters.

the revised severance was not an offer, I had no choice whether or not to accept it, I was told I WOULD be getting 3 month severance instead of the 1 week.

In that case, the Guardian article is wrong. It states that your erstwhile employers offered 1 week salary, then increased to 3 months. You might want to correct the misreport. The Guardian is pretty good about correcting mistakes.

Clearly, this is only a partially informed, non legal opinion, but the facts as presented so far look to me like you've got a legal mountain to climb. I'd have taken the money. But I'm not you.

--Ng

Umm, yes

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's employed in a "right to work" state, then the employer can fire him for any reason or no reason. On the flip side the employee can leave the company anytime for any reason or no reason.

1. He's not in the US, he is in Britain, where if you had RTFAd, you would know that they do have such a law.

2. You are talking completely out of your ass. A "right to work" state has nothing to do with the ability of an employer to fire employees. It refers to the particular state's laws regulating collective bargaining agreements. If a state outlaws agreements that require workers to be members of a union, then it is a "right-to-work state". It simply means that you have a right to work regardless of your membership in a union.

Re:Umm, yes

[Noaccess0]

I think he meant to say "at will state" - not that it matters, it still doesn't apply.

Nasty situation.

[salparadyse]

Are we really going to stand for a society where to express any kind of opinion that runs contrary to the norm (corporate line) results in rejection and sacking? The end result will be a society where people report each other for holding non-conformist opinions as a way of getting promotion.

Re:Nasty situation.

[__aaclcg7560]

The end result will be a society where people report each other for holding non-conformist opinions as a way of getting promotion.

Like that doesn't happen already? Does the term "corporate politics" mean anything?

At one company I worked for, I kept detailed documentation of all decisions that affected my project and my boss thought I was trying to get him fired. It probably didn't help that I told him he deserved to be fired if he thought I was trying to get him fired even though I wasn't doing anything special to get him fired. Eventually, he got himself promoted out of the department. The next boss was determined to get me fired because he thought I would try to get him fired. It probably didn't help that I told him he deserved to be fired even though I wasn't doing anything special to get him fired. I ended up leaving because I got tired of that crap when I was only trying to do my job. Go figure.

Re:Nasty situation.

[salparadyse]

Sounds like an episode of Yes Minister.

Re:Nasty situation.

[LordNimon]

I told him he deserved to be fired if he thought I was trying to get him fired even though I wasn't doing anything special to get him fired.

Frankly, I think that was just a stupid thing to say. You appear to be one of those people who are often belligerent and antagonistic when they shouldn't be. I just see no purpose in making a statement like that to your boss, even if it is true. You're supposed to have a healthy relationship with your co-workers. I can't help but think that your bosses were trying to do the right thing, but you wouldn't let them.

Re:Nasty situation.

[__aaclcg7560]

I was not in a work environment where these two managers had "healthy relationship" with each other or their employees. The fact that these two managers were often competing against each other to claim the top spot in the department was when I got caught in the crossfire. Since I documented everything related to my project, and they were deliberately interfering with my project to get back at each other, I had the proof that upper management needed to implemented changes. That's why one manager got promoted out and the other one got the top job.

The manager who got the top job had to settled score with all those beneath him. Which is why I left since I didn't need to deal with this crap again after being there for six years. I was the third person out of eight senior people who left the company in the last year. You have to wonder what kind of "healthy relationship" is being promoted when a manager drives out senior people to hire temps that can be fired at whim. He deserves to be fired but not because I did anything special. ;)

Slashdot is not what it used to be .......

[Anonymous Coward]

And another dupe.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/07/04/1115235.shtml ?tid=149&tid=17

Why should your readers read /. if you are not even willing to read your own website?

Uh, Surprised...?

[__aaclcg7560]

I'm not surprised. Companies these days want you to focus on the job to the point of excluding any kind of social life that might interfere with your commitment to work. If you put yourself in position where your views are publicly available, it will be used against you. It wouldn't surprised me if I get fired for my comments on /. one of these days.

Re:Uh, Surprised...?

[Anonymous Coward]

creimer (824291) please report to the manager's office.

Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[putko]

I'm sure Britain doesn't have the concept of "at will" employment, or the concept that if the guy was self-employed, "freedom of contract" -- but it seems clear, they don't owe him a job.

The guy got fired because he's on record making hostile statements about intellectual property. A company that lives and dies by I.P. has a good reason to not want the potential troublemaker.

E.g. suppose I work for a AIDS activist organization, doing some programming. But I'm on record as saying, "AIDS is God's way of punishing sodomites." If that got around, I figure I'd be out of some work.

Put yourself in the shoes of management. Try to imagine having to keep on working with someone who says, "I hate you and all that you stand for." If you were a manager, you'd probably feel really frustrated if you couldn't fire him.

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[Osrin]

while the UK does not have the concept of "at will" employment any employer is able to release an employee for any reason during the first 13 weeks of employment without a need to state a reason.

Employment protection, as I understand it, only really kicks in after the end of the 13 week period when the employer is obligated to provide the employee with a contract, terms and employment protection.

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[m50d]

It's his opinion. If you believe that about AIDS but still do your work as good as anyone else, you shouldn't be fired. Companies shouldn't be able to fire you just for expressing your beliefs, which is what this amounts to.

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[Ngwenya]

while the UK does not have the concept of "at will" employment any employer is able to release an employee for any reason during the first 13 weeks of employment without a need to state a reason.

Up to a point, this is correct. However, you cannot terminate a person's employment (even within the probationary period) for reasons contrary to discrimination laws. You couldn't, for instance, terminate the contract of a person of Asian extraction because "we don't hire Pakis here", nor could you fire a woman because the company has an all-male employment policy (such a policy would be almost certainly illegal, except for some very well defined exceptions).

Now, here's the interesting bit - and I really don't know how this will turn out - Hanff has made no secret of his views (which is why the Beeb interviewed him!); and it's reasonable to suspect that his employer was aware (or could reasonably be expected to be aware) of said views, and hired him anyway. He's claiming that his termination violates the Human Rights Act (though that tends to bind governments acts against the people, rather than between private entities), and he will sue accordingly.

We'll see how this turns out. Should be interesting. At stake is just how much control an employer can exercise over an employee speaking in his own time. It's not really about the "right to a job", it's to do with the extension of a contract beyond its terms. Employment contracts are infamous, being the only contract which one side can change the terms unilaterally (hence employment protection laws).

--Ng

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[hyfe]

E.g. suppose I work for a AIDS activist organization, doing some programming. But I'm on record as saying, "AIDS is God's way of punishing sodomites." If that got around, I figure I'd be out of some work.

If you were reasonably discrete about your opinions (ie; not actively spreading discord) I don't think you should be fired.

People should be judged by their actions; the rest is just crap.

People from poor neighbourhoods are more likely to be secret junkies.
Blacks are more likely to have a criminal backgroun.
Nature Activist are more likely to be missing from work due to be jailed.
People with dieing parents are more likely to be called on hospital visits.
Sys admins who don't believe in copyrights are more likely to.. erm.. sabotage their own company?

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[Durzel]

Hanff has made no secret of his views (which is why the Beeb interviewed him!); and it's reasonable to suspect that his employer was aware (or could reasonably be expected to be aware) of said views, and hired him anyway.

Whilst I agree with the bulk of your post, I disgree with the above statement.

Regardless of your personal stance on copyright/IPR anyone with half a brain must realise that disagreeing with it is a "negative viewpoint", particularly as exercising your beliefs in this context is actually illegal.

No one would knowingly walk into an interview for an IT company and say "By the way folks, I dont believe in copyright/IPR and actually provide a service [dvdr-core.com] to facilitate software piracy. What's the pension scheme like?".

By the same token you couldn't reasonably expect a company interviewing someone who has applied for a post to have such a radically opposing point of view on a subject which is core to the companys ideals.

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[Anonymous Coward]

nor could you fire a woman because the company has an all-male employment policy/

Yeah but what if you really needed some peace and quiet to get some work done?

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Employment contracts are infamous, being the only contract which one side can change the terms unilaterally (hence employment protection laws).

That's not true, at least not according to the legal advice I took when a new contract was being put together after my employer was bought out a few months back. There is no such thing as a contract that can automatically be changed by one party unilaterally, at least under UK law: one of the basic requirements of a legally binding contract is the understanding and consent of both parties.

What is common in the UK is to have a clause in your employment contract that says the employer can change anything at any time. This is usually argued to be a CYA manoeuvre in case the government changes employment regs and the wording needs tweaking. I've never bought this argument myself -- nor ever seen such a change being required -- but I can at least understand the perspective.

However, you have to realise that this is only possible because the contract already includes a term providing for it, to which both parties agreed, and its scope is rather limited even if it's written in an open-ended way. Even without the fact that the major employment details can't be changed unilaterally under UK employment laws anyway, changing anything in an unreasonable way using that clause could lead to a finding that the fundamental trust relationship has broken down between employer and employee. That in turn can result in a finding of constructive dismissal, which can be very costly in both financial and PR terms for the company.

In summary, the idea that an employment contract can be changed at will by one party is rather misleading, at least in the UK.

Obligatory disclaimer: IANAL, and if you're dealing with this sort of stuff relating to your own career, you do want to speak to one.

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[Ngwenya]

Regardless of your personal stance on copyright/IPR anyone with half a brain must realise that disagreeing with it is a "negative viewpoint", particularly as exercising your beliefs in this context is actually illegal.

Again, it all depends on context and extremity of view. Hypothetically, if someone claims on their CV to be well known on the Internet, then I'd probably Google for them and see what turns up. In the case of Alex Hanff, this would have turned up boatloads of information. Now, the question: is that a reasonable expectation for an IT sector employer? I would argue, that in this day and age, yes it is. You might equally well argue (as you have) that you figure that no employer who places great stock in copyright would think that a bona-fide copyright enemy would want to apply for a job with them, and thus such a check would be superfluous. I mean, how many employers actually write to universities to check that someone actually has the degree they claim to have?

But what I don't know is what beliefs Alex Hanff actually holds. Does he believe that copyrights must be abolished, and that illegal means are justified to accomplish this? I wouldn't be happy employing someone with those beliefs. Does he believe that copyrights need to be redrafted because they've gone way too far and are being abused? Well, that's not quite firing material, in my book.

[Drifting OT here]As for the exercise of the view being illegal, that's not always true either. There are some perfectly valid defences under most legal systems which allow copyright infringement to take place (eg, fair use, expiry within another jurisdiction). Similarly, the notion of contributory copyright infringement is not always on solid legal ground in many jurisdictions.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to employ sophistry here - I don't think that dvdr-core was innocent of copyright violating intent. I'm just not a lawyer, and copyright law is very complex, so I don't like to comment on legality.

--Ng

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[Ngwenya]

Employment contracts are infamous, being the only contract which one side can change the terms unilaterally (hence employment protection laws).

That's not true, at least not according to the legal advice I took when a new contract was being put together after my employer was bought out a few months back. There is no such thing as a contract that can automatically be changed by one party unilaterally, at least under UK law: one of the basic requirements of a legally binding contract is the understanding and consent of both parties.

Sorry, I was being too flippant when I made the original statement. I don't really mean that employment contracts can literally be rewritten, but I did mean that their terms often include statements like the one you highlight, where an employer has the right to alter the clauses unilaterally (Mine was altered twice - once to comply with the Data Protection Act, and once to comply with the Working Time Directive). Thus, in effect, an employer has far more weight in the contract than the employee. And if they don't have those, then the T&Cs often have catch all statements like "...and such other duties as management shall require". But how many employment contracts include text like "And these terms and conditions may be revised by the employee if he or she determines their strictures to be overly burdensome"? (Note to self: add this to next contract!)

That said, I do know of many cases where people have signed an employment contract but with clauses stricken from the standard text - and those amended contracts have been accepted by the employer

Nevertheless, you're quite right: the type of contract doesn't exempt you from the basic tenets of reasonability. Unfair contract terms will still be voided by a court, whether a party signed up to them or not.

--Ng

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[crankyspice]

He's claiming that his termination violates the Human Rights Act (though that tends to bind governments acts against the people, rather than between private entities), and he will sue accordingly.

He's also insisting that there's no way the U.S. courts could possibly have absolutely any jurisdiction over him, despite him entering into a contract in California with an ISP there located, to run the DVD-Core server. Anyone with an even layman's grasp of Federal Civil Procedure knows the point is at least arguable (long arm statutes + 'minimum contacts' -- purposeful availment and foreseeabilit -- so far so good; then you argue over 'traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice'), and not a slam dunk in his favor.

My impression is that Mr. Hanff doesn't know/understand the law quite as well as he'd like to believe he does. In other words, Inconceivable!

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[bbc]

"The guy got fired because he's on record making hostile statements about intellectual property."

Is he? Where did you get that from?

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[Suicyco]

We are talking IP laws here. Almost every company on the planet lives and dies by IP laws in one way or another. They write highly vertical database software for training and other such things. Nobody would copy that crap anyway.

Its not like he stood up against computerized training software, and they fired him for attacking their bread and butter.

Saying this is justified is like argeeing with firing some guy for doing an interview on TV against coffee, because all companies live and die on coffee.

What if he was a marijuana activist, for instance? Would firing him be justified? What if he was an outspoken racist? Hated children?

Re:Hard to Argue that They Owe Him Work

[Suicyco]

link: http://www.aldcliffe.com/

not that Alex Hanff...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Alex Hanff is anything like he was when I knew him, the company are probably looking for any excuse to fire him. Apparently he was only a week into this job, but that was probably enough for the company to realise what a mistake they'd made.

Re:not that Alex Hanff...

[Floody]

If Alex Hanff is anything like he was when I knew him, the company are probably looking for any excuse to fire him. Apparently he was only a week into this job, but that was probably enough for the company to realise what a mistake they'd made.

Yes, I suspect that there are other factors in play here that aren't being mentioned (disclaimer: I don't personally know this fellow at all).

Most professional IT people are aware that if they have a good relationship with their employer and co-workers, the company will generally bend over backwards to keep them employed. Why? Because, as anyone who has ever had the displeasure of being responsible for staffing knows, it's damn hard to find new employees who are both competent and a good "mesh" with a given corporate culture. When you find them, you really really don't want to lose them. (Even if it means "hiding" them for a bit until the media attention cools off)

Most likely, even after that first week (and before the interview), eyebrows had been raised by some behavior or other of Mr. Hanff's.

Re:not that Alex Hanff...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, I'll second that. I know him online and to be fair he's a complete moran. And he never paid me for the work I did for him. *grump*

Re:not that Alex Hanff...

[Durzel]

That work didn't include proof-reading anything did it?

Too big for his boots

[DrSoCold]

He is a fool and obviously thinks he can say what he wants and still rake in the cash from companies, you can't!. If you want the cash you gotta play the game.

Re:Too big for his boots

[Sneakabout]

Wow, being able to say what you like.... that'd be great.

Pity that there's no universal principle about that or anything, we could make one up, call it... umm... open speech.

Re:Too big for his boots

[Sinner]

If you want the cash you gotta play the game.

And how is he supposed to eat without cash? Armed robbery? You may as well say "If you want to eat you gotta keep your mouth shut." Which may well be an accurate summation of the state of affairs, but it rather makes a mockery of freedom of speech, doesn't it?

The interview in question..

[Stalyn]

can be downloaded here via bittorrent. I think the overall question is whether or not a person can be fired over a philosophical view.

He never said that he is going to pirate software or will help those who do (he removed the torrent tracker from his site in December). However he was served with lawsuit via the MPAA in March. He is going to fight the lawsuit in court. He is fighting the lawsuit on jurisdiction grounds, that the MPAA has no right to sue him. Even though the server was temporarily hosted in California.

Anyway I think his point is that the MPAA is using gestapo tactics in scaring people to settle and he is not going to settle. He'd rather fight this in court. Anyway he does have a case in light of the recent ruling since it only applies to those who promote the trading of illegal material. I think removing the tracker in December is the appropriate action.

Re:The interview in question..

[Spad]

You can also get the whole of last nights programme here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/tvseq/newsnight/ newsnight.ram

At least until 22:30 GMT tonight.

Re:The interview in question..

[Microlith]

Anyway he does have a case in light of the recent ruling since it only applies to those who promote the trading of illegal material.

Which means if the suit were to proceed in the US he'd be boned cause he was encouraging the violation of copyright.

The MPAA could likely follow him in the UK by either filing there (lack of jurisidction? they're a private entity, not the legal system!) or having their european counterpart do so, but there's no certainty on the outcome because US precedent doesn't exactly apply over there.

They might take it into consideration, the US and UK sometimes share judicial precedents.

You used to be cool, man.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell happened to you?

In other news...

[Tune]

In other news...
...Oh no wait, the other news is actually the same.

Sigh.

If it were me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would SUE THEM!

They are judging me before I am tried. That is not on!

best way to get yourself out of your crappy job...

[Anonymous Coward]

now i know the way
thanx to Alex

Not a dupe.

[oberondarksoul]

Hanff wasn't fired for using peer-to-peer software, as that story states, but instead for voicing an opinion (on national television, natch) that wasn't quite in fitting with his employer's.

Perhaps you should 'read your own fucking links'? ;-)

Re:Not a dupe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hanff wasn't fired for using peer-to-peer software, as that story states,

Yeah, but the Guardian write-up linked to in both *is the same link*.

He was also funding a torrent site

[Antiocheian]

Most comments (until now) focus on Guardian's article "File-share defender fired over TV show". However there is another issue here; Mr. Hanff was also funding a torrent site.

Therefore, is not only a matter of opinion but also a matter of action. Considering that Mr. Hanff declared himself to own nothing more than "a few guitars [...] and an old inkjet printer", one can conclude that part of his salary was going to the maintenance of the torrent site.

Take into account that his former employer is not dealing with end users but with companies (they are making database software solutions) -- they really don't want any cloud of unprofessionalism shade their contracts. It is extremely unfortunate for such a man to be fired (considering his statements, one can be pretty sure that he is a good person) -- but I really can't blame his company for firing him.

Both good examples

[Ferretski]

So if you are a haliburton employee and you are against the war in iraq you should be fired? If you are a govt employee and you are against the war in iraq or you publicly state that you think George Bush is an idiot and a religious fundamendalist zealot you should be fired?

and

suppose I work for a AIDS activist organization, doing some programming. But I'm on record as saying, "AIDS is God's way of punishing sodomites." If that got around, I figure I'd be out of some work.

In both examples the hypothetical employee has an opinion against that of "the corporation", but in one it seems right to let the employee go - but not in the other. I think the difference is the political correctness of the opinion: being against the war in Iraq is generally accepted as OK, but saying that AIDS is God's way of punishing sodomites is probably not. Having employees saying things that are not politically correct causes company's problems, and hence he got fired.

I have an Idea...

[abandonment]

I have an idea - how about a post on how the horrific spelling on slashdot can harm a career?

Seriously, the spelling and grammar on this thread is either indicative of how riled up people are about this topic OR it is a sign of how slashdot use can seriously harm your brain...

It's IDEOLOGY, not 'idiology' people - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology

Perhaps they meant 'idiot-ology'...a common ailment of slashdot users...

Ugh...it's amazing how mad people can get while flaming others on a forum while making themselves look like complete idiots...

Re:I have an Idea...

[Stauf]

Perhaps they meant 'idiot-ology'...a common ailment of slashdot users...

Wouldn't that be the study of morons? And an ailment... hmmm... would that mean that if you passed an idiot in the street you would be compelled to stop and study him/her?

And common on slashdot? Well I guess thats why we have so many frequent posters, they came for the news and stayed for the idiology.

Notice a common theme here and elsewhere?

[kcbrown]

This guy got fired because the company he worked for disapproves of his beliefs.

You can get (and people have been) fired for doing things on your own time that the company doesn't like.

You can get (and people, like this guy, have been) fired for saying things on your own time that your company doesn't like.

Notice a common theme here? The common theme is that if you work for a company, that company owns you. You are their slave. In exchange for an ever decreasing amount of money for your time, you have to do everything they tell you and demonstrate that you believe everything they want you to believe.

And the government that keeps telling you that it's there to protect your personal liberty? It's nowhere to be found, because it's controlled by the very same people who control the corporations that you are increasingly a slave to.

Welcome to the 21st century. Enjoy the ride to the bottom. Soon enough, you won't be allowed to enjoy anything else.

Re:Notice a common theme here and elsewhere?

[Anonymous Coward]

The common theme is that if you work for a company, that company owns you. You are their slave. In exchange for an ever decreasing amount of money for your time, you have to do everything they tell you and demonstrate that you believe everything they want you to believe.

Not here in the UK. That part of Employment Law was changed in the late 1970s.

Re:Notice a common theme here and elsewhere?

[BVD]

No, the company only 'owns' you, if you have hocked yourself into to much debt, and if you have not saved enough money to cover your obligations for the amount of time which may be required while you get another job. If a company 'owns' you, it is because you have put yourself in position to be a slave. If you don't like it, it is not the company's fault, it is yours. Live correctly and within your means and you will be nobody's slave.

Re:Notice a common theme here and elsewhere?

[The Bungi]

The common theme is that if you work for a company, that company owns you. You are their slave. In exchange for an ever decreasing amount of money for your time, you have to do everything they tell you and demonstrate that you believe everything they want you to believe.

That's a nice way to put it. Visceral. OMFG TEH KOMPANIE TEHY 0WN3D U!!1!. Guaranteed to get a rise out of people, eh?

The problem of course is that slavery was abolished a long time ago. If you don't agree with the ideals espoused by the company, then don't fucking work for them. It's that simple. If we're talking about established and accepted concepts such as copyright and intellectual property whose detractors currently operate at the fringes of society, then you have absolutely no argument whatsoever. It's not like you're trying to fight "the man" over baby seals or the spotted owl.

I don't agree with how malware companies operate. I would not work for a malware company. I don't. See how easy it is?

If you have a problem with the entire industry then may I suggest you pursue alternative careers, such as landscaping or the circus. Either way, please don't insult my intelligence by asserting that I'm somehow trapped in some sort of brutal slavery ring because I work for a company instead of growing potatoes in my back yard.

Re:Notice a common theme here and elsewhere?

[Darth_Burrito]

If you are actively against the way copyright law is being handled, you shouldn't work for Disney. Don't work for the man who's keeping you down, don't be another brick in the wall, etc.

Companies become souless monstrosities when people decide to work for them despite the fact that they disagree with them on a fundamental, moral point.

Re:Notice a common theme here and elsewhere?

[tepples]

Live correctly and within your means and you will be nobody's slave.

Then what should one do if one cannot find a job upon graduation?

Re:Notice a common theme here and elsewhere?

[BVD]

I guess I don't follow the point. We are talking about a company 'owning' the employee. If you can't get a job, then you are not owned by a corp and the discussion does not apply. The slavery aspect only comes into play when you have a job, and are so afraid of loosing that job that you must do everything the corp tells you to do.

Re:Notice a common theme here and elsewhere?

[tepples]

The slavery aspect only comes into play when you have a job, and are so afraid of loosing that job that you must do everything the corp tells you to do.

Or when every offer of employment given to a job seeker has a non-negotiable condition authorizing such slavery.

He's lucky he's in Europe....

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the bloke has some legal redress to allow the courts to assess unfair dismissal claims. Here in AUstralia we have that right at the moment but our Federal gov't is about to try and take it away completely for anyone employed by a small business (defined as a business with 100 employees!!.
Of course they're not allowed to SAY they're sacking you because of your religion, race, etc...but then again they don't have to give ANY reason...
19th Century Free Market ideology is being re-adopted at the cost of our freedoms

Re:He's lucky he's in Europe....

[Anonymous Coward]

How does the privilege of being given a position of employment at a company become a freedom? Surley by taking away the employer's rights to dismiss their workers you're taking away their freedom?

Re:He's lucky he's in Europe....

[Anonymous Coward]

"19th Century Free Market ideology is being re-adopted at the cost of our freedoms"

Yes, but note. It's only the aspects of "Free Market" that benefits the employer.

Re:He's lucky he's in Europe....

[Anonymous Coward]

ATM the law favours the party in the weakest bargaining position, that is about to change.

Should you wish to email you r complaints . .

[Tetsugaku-San]

Send it to here:

directors@aldcliffe.com

And tell em how badly their image has suffered for being gits.

Re:Should you wish to email you r complaints . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Mail Miles.Cheverton@deadenddesign.com and let him know what you think of gits who incite DDoS attacks.

Re:Should you wish to email you r complaints . .

[Tetsugaku-San]

Aw you didn't include an email!! Silly you.

Informed choices

[Aceticon]

How about if i'm just buying a new TV and want to weight in my choice the environmental track record of the manufacturer?

Or am buying clothing and want to know if the manufacturer uses child labour?

Or am buying financial services and want to know how does that company treat it's employees?

When sitting on the store one rarelly has internet access or the time to trail through the information even if said access is available.

It's self-deception to expect most people to take notebooks with mobile internet access to the electronics shop in order to make an informed decision on which TV to buy.

My sugestion is as follows:
- Setup an "informed choices" service. This should serve as an intermediary between consumers and third party entities (consumer groups, NGOs, government, business groups, whatever) willing to provide information about products and companies
- The service is customiseable per-person. You can log in via de internet and choose what factors do you care about and how much do u trust the information coming from each of the third party entities
- The service should support a simple and easy way of letting consumers get the right info when they're out shopping. For example using a mobile phone with a bar code reader (or maybe using the phone camera for that) or an RFID reader and a mobile connection to said service allowing to simply: press a button; point mobile at product; get the info u care about; choose.

The point here is two-fold:
- Give enough information to the consumers to let them do informed decisions but not so much that they need to spend lots of time just getting informed. (otherwise ppl will simply not do/use it). Hence the whole user configured filtering and trust weighting.
- Give consumers access to the information when and where they need it. Consumers should not have to prepare themselfs before going out shopping by browsing some site(s) in the Net, figure out beforehand the list of brands of the things they want to buy and having to memorize the (environmental, work conditions, polution history, whatever) information for each brand just to make informed decisions. Simply put - if they have to jump through all those hoops people will just not do it.
Hence the sugestion of mobile access and bar code/rfid tag reading - fast, simple, no preparation required - you just scan the product and out comes an evaluation of the brand/maker according to your chosen criteria (for example, respect for the environment)

Re:Informed choices

[sylvester]

humph. that's the third independent source of that idea I've seen. I'd say that means it safe to say someone's doing it. :-)

-Rob

Re:Informed choices

[trendyhendy]

How about if i'm just buying a new TV and want to weight in my choice the environmental track record of the manufacturer?

Well, for that and more check out Know More. It's a corporate watch wiki with ratings on a range of factors for many companies.

Re:Informed choices

[caluml]

How about if i'm just buying a new TV and want to weight in my choice the environmental track record of the manufacturer?

Or am buying clothing and want to know if the manufacturer uses child labour?

Or am buying financial services and want to know how does that company treat it's employees?

Most people don't have any principles, and just take the easy/cheap option.
I have needed to run Windows applciations quite a few times, but because I refuse to run Windows at home, I can't. It's just my principle.

Re:Informed choices

[lucas_picador]

There are several projects along these lines listed here; are there other people out there doing this kind of thing?

Re:Informed choices

[drew]

How about if i'm just buying a new TV and want to weight in my choice the environmental track record of the manufacturer?

Or am buying clothing and want to know if the manufacturer uses child labour?

Or am buying financial services and want to know how does that company treat it's employees?

When sitting on the store one rarelly has internet access or the time to trail through the information even if said access is available.

Yeah, because it would be so difficult to do your research before you went to the store..

Re:Informed choices

[miu]

So who gets to categorize third party information sources so consumers can give credability ratings to sources?

Bias can be introduced into such a system nearly everywhere. Even something as simple as the order in which choices are presented can influence decisions.

You can't pretend that "environmental track record" and "labor relations" are some sort of simple variable that can be rated from 1 to 10.

turning down settlement reduces chances

[Anonymous Coward]

if the report is true and he turned down a 3-month settlement, preferring to sue, then I'd hazard a guess he's reduced his chances somewhat. UK courts aren't enthralled by people who sue for fun.

Noone sounds like noon

[anti-NAT]

I don't normally have a problem with other peoples' misspellings, however, I aways trip up on "noone" to the point where I'm also starting to get annoyed when I see it. What's worse is that it seems to be becoming more and more popular.

The problem with "noone" is that you get mentally half way into thinking "noon" and then realise that it's about to be "noon-e", a nonsense word because of the "e" on the end. Then you realise that the person is really trying to mean "no one".

If people insist on joining the two words together, at least a hyphen would be nice, as in "no-one". That also looks odd, and that should be a sign that the hypen should really be a space.

Re:Noone sounds like noon

[colinrichardday]

While the dictionaries that I have checked do not list "noone" as a word, the formation is consistent with putting "any", "some", "every", and "no" in front of "thing", "where", "body, and "one". Of the sixteen possibilities, only "noone" is not a word.

Re:Noone sounds like noon

[Wiwi Jumbo]

That's funny, I keep thinking it's a mistyped "none".

But my spelling and grammer is sub-par even for Slashdot standards.

Re:Noone sounds like noon

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's because of the havoc it would cause to the (already bizarre) English pronunciation system...
I suppose that some-one is pretty bad too, my first guess there would be that it's an Italian word: so-meo-ne. Likewise noth-ing rather than no-thing. Perhaps it's time to abandon any hope of English making sense.

Re:Noone sounds like noon

[Anonymous Coward]

You are calling someone stupid for not spelling no one correctly and then tell us all you have a hard time trying to figure out what word the person was trying to use? Sounds like you are the stupid one. Considering the fact that you also stated you see this error all the time makes you look even dumber because you should be able to understand it because of the context AND the fact that it is a common error.

Either that or you are being a jackass spelling nazi to make up for a lack of something else missing in your life.

Re:Noone sounds like noon

[anti-NAT]

While the dictionaries that I have checked do not list "noone" as a word, the formation is consistent with putting "any", "some", "every", and "no" in front of "thing", "where", "body, and "one". Of the sixteen possibilities, only "noone" is not a word.

That's probably why people do it. The reason why I think it is probably the exception is that it breaks the repeated vowel rule, where the vowel in question is pronounced "long" rather than "short".

English is a bit of a "mutt" of a language, with many words from other languages, and many constructions which don't necessarily make sense. Specifically regarding these joinings of words with "body or one", if you think about it, there actually isn't an obvious reason why it was done in the first place. How is "nobody" any better than "no body", other than saving a space ? Of course we're conditioned to use "nobody" so "no body" looks odd now.

Re:No, Not Too big for his boots

[IceRa]

This is exactly the problem (out of many others) of the capitalist world. Whatever opinion one states has absolutely NOTHING to with his work. An Employee sells hist time and work power, not all of his existence.
Constitutions of countries all over the world grant "free speech".
So?
So it's the companies that need to learn to "play the game"!

IceRa

Why was he fired?

[CaptainFork]

TFA states that he was fired for his opinion, then it states that he was fired for failing do disclose that he was involved in civil proceedings.

We need to see a statement by the employer in order to know which is true. The Guardian openly admits to being a little left of centre and may be biased against the employer in this story.

Also, I cannot believe the company would have employed him if they had known his position and involvement in anti-copyright activism. This is why employers apply probation (and UK law permits this): so that if you find out right after employing someone that they're not right for the job you can still get rid of them fairly easily (though many companies don't bother due to the astronomical cost of recruitment).

so, murphy's laws of combat are right once again..

[Anonymous Coward]

"anything you do can get you killed. and that includes doing nothing!"

Probationary period in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a lawyer, but I do know something of the employer-employee relationships in Europe.

Ordinarily (in Europe at least) an employer cannot terminate your employment contract without good cause. Well ... they can, but at the expense of quite some legal bother and financial compensation.

Good cause being your performance on the job and specifically excludes anything you do in private, unless it directly and demonstrably harms your employer. In such cases the burden of proof is on the employer, and the intent of the law is to protect employees against dismissal on ground of race, religion, sexual orientation, political opinion (this would apply in our case), etc.. Speaking out against IP in your spare time would *not* be considered to constitute good cause, even for employees of an IP-related firm.

However ... each employment contract starts out with a probationary period (usually 6 months), during which either side may terminate it instantly without having to state any reason at all. As the man in question was on the job for less than 6 months, he would have been in his probation period.

Even if the company had had reservations about his race, religion, accent, physical appearance or sexual orientation, they could have fired him and just kept mum about their motivation. The employee in question would have no redress whatsoever. In Europe it is only *after* your probationary period that you are covered by legal protection against unfair dismissal.

Re:Probationary period in Europe

[jabuzz]

In the United Kingdom that probationary period is 12 months. Though for certain things it is instant. So if you hire a woman, who when she starts the job tells you she is pregant, if you then sack her, you will be in trouble. Also if the employer is letting people go after 11 months to avoid them getting their years service and protection, they will also get done. The employment tribunal take a dim view of anyone trying to dodge the legislation.

However as he as just one week into his employment he is out in the cold.

Re:Probationary period in Europe

[julesh]

However as he as just one week into his employment he is out in the cold.

Not necessarily. There are many things he isn't entitled to because of the length of time he has worked there. For instance, he isn't entitled to a written statement of the reason for his dismissal (however the employer has issued a statement to the press which would be admissable in a tribunal as evidence of why they dismissed him).

The Employment Right Acts 1996:

94. - (1) An employee has the right not to be unfairly dismissed by his employer.

That says nothing about time restrictions. With regards to whether or not the dismissal is fair, the act says this:

it is for the employer to show-

(a) the reason (or, if more than one, the principal reason) for the dismissal, and

(b) that it is either a reason falling within subsection (2) or some other substantial reason of a kind such as to justify the dismissal of an employee holding the position which the employee held.

(2) A reason falls within this subsection if it-

(a) relates to the capability or qualifications of the employee for performing work of the kind which he was employed by the employer to do,

(b) relates to the conduct of the employee,

(c) is that the employee was redundant, or

(d) is that the employee could not continue to work in the position which he held without contravention (either on his part or on that of his employer) of a duty or restriction imposed by or under an enactment.

Clearly they would be relying on case (2)(b) here. Also relevant is this:

(4) Where the employer has fulfilled the requirements of subsection (1), the determination of the question whether the dismissal is fair or unfair (having regard to the reason shown by the employer)-

(a) depends on whether in the circumstances (including the size and administrative resources of the employer's undertaking) the employer acted reasonably or unreasonably in treating it as a sufficient reason for dismissing the employee, and

(b) shall be determined in accordance with equity and the substantial merits of the case.

I'd say it isn't really clear from the legislation whether or not he has a case, and we'd have to look at case law to find out. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about such things to find the relevant cases.

The employer's statement for why he was fired is this:

The decision to terminate [Mr Hanff's] employment was made in order to defend our legitimate business interests. Mr Hanff has declared that he is opposed to copyright and intellectual property laws. Since much of our business is based around the protection of our copyright and intellectual property, we consider our dismissal of Mr Hanff entirely justified and appropriate.

Interestingly, this isn't for any of the 4 reasons listed as falling under "subsection 2" above. It is for the reason that the employee has shown that he has opinions that suggest he would be opposed to the company performing one of the functions it does in order to make money (i.e. protect its IP rights). I'm not sure, but I think a tribunal will look at that and declare those as unfair grounds for dismissal.

He has a chance, at least.

Looks like illegally unfair dismissal to me

[pjc50]

From the Grauniad article:

"... claiming that he was sacked for a "philosophical belief" in contravention of employment law and the European Human Rights Act."

I think he's right. He may be at a serious disadvantage having been at his job for only a week, but if his employer explicitly said his opinions OUTSIDE WORK were the reason for firing him, they're in trouble.

The HRA does only bind the government, I'm told, but UK employment law is quite sensible about this sort of thing.

Amazing

[oneandoneis2]

Over 100 comments, and still everybody is talking about him being fired.

He wasn't. All the posts about legal redress and the moral question about whether or not you can be fired for an opinion are completely moot.

Tribal Group, which owns Aldcliffe Computing, said in a statement: "Mr Hanff was employed on a probationary basis for one week in one of our software companies."

They didn't fire him. They just didn't renew his contract. Before you post your outrage, bear this fact firmly in mind: Hanff was not fired

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

They didn't fire him. They just didn't renew his contract.

In every employment contract I've seen in the UK, the probation clause was just written into the main contract. The contract normally carries on automatically if you don't terminate it, but can be terminated more easily than usual during the probationary period.

Do you have some reason to believe this wasn't the case here?

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I was, and I have the paper work to prove it. Their statement to the press was an attempt to dampen down the situation. This was a career position with pension and prospects. This was a company who during the rigourous interview process phoned the agency that forwarded my application on several occassions to say how blown away they were with the quality of my application. This was a company who for my first week of a lifetime career did nothing but praise me very heavily for my progress and skills. This is a company that gave me permission to leave work early in order to do the interview. And this is the company who, the next day fired me for stating that I felt the actions of the MPAA are going to cause serious social harm.

This is a company that broke human rights law.
This is a company that broke employment law.
This is a company I will pursue with all the tools available, in a legal arena.

Alexander Hanff

Re:Amazing

[CrosbieFitch]

Maybe all coders should unite and create a website where they publicly declare petition-style that they wholeheartedly believe that the actions of the RIAA/MPAA/etc are going to cause serious social harm?

It should probably also be a petition for the abolition of copyright.

Incidentally, anyone got any C++/C# work going?

Re:Amazing

[Arathrael]

a company who during the rigourous interview process phoned the agency that forwarded my application on several occassions to say how blown away they were with the quality of my application

Er... what? Why would they do that? Were they just sitting there thinking, "Man I'm bored... oh, I know, I'll phone that agency and praise that Hanff bloke. Again. He's so great!"

I can see how they might phone once but several times?

Peer to Peer a 'dirty' phrase

[Anonymous Coward]

I can testify to that. I recently worked with a company to integrate with their Groove.net based solution, a peer to peer environment for document exchange and synchronization. However, when we prepared to present our work, I was told explicitly and repeatedly NEVER to use the phrase 'peer to peer'. Given that we were trying to use our resulting solution to sell the overall package, I found it quite disturbing that such steps were necessary.

Re:No, Not Too big for his boots

[tweek]

I disagree and I'm the biggest proponent of free speech I know.

Look, i can't expect a company to continue my employement in widgets if I work for the anti-widget consortium and actively try to destroy the widget industry.

It's called conflict of interest. I don't want to hire someone at my widget plant if I even suspect he might try to sabotoge my widget manufacturing.

Free speech is not freedom from consequences and free speech isn't absolute. Your right to free speech, at least in the US, is limited as it relates to public safety. The old "fire in a crowded theater" bit and what not.

In this case, the employer felt that his views on copyright and intellectual property DIRECTLY conflicted with its business. I can't to the interview from the office right now (not screwing with production and all that) but I would be interested to hear what he said during the interview.

Employing criminals

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

This is actually one of the few solid reasons for firing someone in the UK. Almost all employment contracts I've seen state that the company may dismiss you if you're convicted of a crime (usually with an exemption for minor motoring offences, so they don't wind up firing 1/3 of the workforce for getting caught on speed camera).

That's always struck me as slightly at odds with all the prisoner-resettlement programmes, and the simple fact that a criminal who's done their time and been released is much less likely to reoffend if they find gainful employment. There's a fine line between someone's criminal past affecting their ability to do a job/the safety of their co-workers/etc. and the right (is it a right?) of employers and coworkers to know that they're dealing with a convicted criminal who did something they shouldn't have, but has now paid the price set by the court.

Of course, if you did a straw poll among non-criminal workers, I imagine it would be pretty clear which way most of them would come down.

Just remember...

[Matilda the Hun]

Remember, any publicity is good publicity. And this company's going for double: They get publicity when he goes on TV, and they get more when they fire him for it.

Bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, personally, I think that they are total bastards!.

However, I am stangely enamoured with their web site, and have already made several "backup" copies by using httrack.

Maybe you should have a look, and maybe set up a cron job yourself, perhaps even two jobs - one from home and one from work - you can never have enough backups, can you?

we've seen this before

[iritant]

Dan Farmer was asked to leave (then) large computer manufacturer when he released Satan. Dan Geer was asked to leave a so-called security company when he and other security notables argued in favor of heterogeneity for purposes of resilience. In the end, it was the companies that looked like idiots and not the above individuals. Bonus for the person who can name the companies...

Re:we've seen this before

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, Dan Farmer... "We don't have any problem with you being a bisexual bondage enthusiast, but releasing a tool that can actually be used to probe security is intolerable!"

Re:we've seen this before

[Anonymous Coward]

SUN and @stake? Where are my points :)?

Re:we've seen this before

[iritant]

half right. SGI and @stake. Although I'm sorry anyone remembers either, given their cowardace.

Re:we've seen this before

[rsynnott]

Well, in civilised countries, it's none of the company's business whether he's a besexual bondage fetishist or not. No similiar protection applies to writing potentially naughty software, tho.

Never be a wage slave: your time is your own

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

So don't accept being a slave. Your time is your own, and you should insist on your contract acknowledging that.

At the risk of getting in trouble, since I'm posting this during my lunch hour at work, some of my colleagues and I did exactly this when our small company was bought out by a US megacorp. The original contract had clauses claiming all our IP outside of work, saying we had to get our manager's permission to take any other job, etc. We told them to stick it, pretty bluntly.

One guy doing that, admittedly, is going out on a limb. One guy leading it, with the vocal backing of several colleagues and the quiet backing of several more, is enough to make them notice.

This resulted in the (apparently unimpressed but not stupid) HR rep leading a round of Q&A to find out what it was that people really objected to, and getting the contract redrafted in a way that was acceptable to the staff. The entire "all your IP are belong to us" clause -- a whole page of legalese -- got scrapped, for example, in favour of the one we used to have that specifically excluded things that didn't use work time or resources, and weren't connected with work. The permission to get another job went, in favour of simply having to notify the employer of hours worked elsewhere so they could be sure they were complying with the European working time regulations.

We did this by being polite but honest, and standing our ground. If everyone in the industry did the same thing, it would be much better for everyone in the industry. It doesn't take rocket science, just a little integrity and a bit of backbone.

Short answer

[ThinWhiteDuke]

So if you are a haliburton employee and you are against the war in iraq you should be fired?

Yes, of course. Was that a trick question on what?

Thankyou /.ers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well,

Both threads about me were brought to my attention and I have to say (despite the minority difference of opinion) my faith in people has been even more re-inforced by these threads.

Aside from the fact that I am a geek and thus being /.'d is a great honour (let alone being /.'d twice) my fight is one about the fact that my human rights were blatantly abused by firing me for my opinion.

Article 9 and Article 10 of the European Human Rights Act state that all individuals are entitled to and opinion and they are also entitled to impart that opinion (which is exactly what I did with my interview with the BBC). Furthermore, the employment law of this country specifically states the same (in fact it is one of the very few scenarios where you do not have to have worked for a company for 12 months in order to protect your employment rights).

I am a socially concerned person and have fought against social issues all my life, from running a charity for abused children, doing research and working with law enforcement around the world tracking down pedophiles and child porn traffickers. I have also had to have corrective surgery to my face after being assaulted for spearheading a campaign against low pay and exploitation of students. I have also spend most of my adult life helping others with the computers (as well as teaching in a university). So this is just the latest in a long history of me fighting for what I believe to be right.

It means a great deal to me to see so many people on a site I thoroughly respect, trying to instill social morals into others (with excellent and valid examples of the dangers supporting bad companies).

For anyone who is interested, here is a brief overview of who I really am (not the thief, funder of terrorism etc etc etc the MPAA would make me out to be):

http://p2pnet.net/story/4528

Again, thankyou all for the tremendous support.

Alexander Hanff
Owner of DVDR-CORE.ORG / Future Father

Re:Thankyou /.ers

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should review your philosophy on life a little more carefully...?

My father said to me once "it's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice." That is my philosophy and I'll crush anyone who tries to stand in my way whilst trying to achieve it.

If you are sad about this story

[Ilgaz]

Well, there is one thing you can do for sure.

Many of Slashdot readers are decision makers for their company and some run huge companies themselves.

Boycott Tribal group when you purchase a solution in their genre.

"firing" is a right given by current economical system and boycott is the right answer and perfectly legit,serious.

Listen to yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

"They just didn't renew his contract."

He was interviewed, then employed, do you interview for a one week contract? So its not a contract. After sacking him they offered him 1 week, then later 3 months redundancy pay.

He probably won't win the legal challenge since it was only 1 week, however Aldcliffe Computing come over as shits for basically undermining his right to defend himself against a civil lawsuit.

How is he supposed to defend himself if he can't say his opinion freely.

Haha, owned.

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

There are other means

[chriseyre2000]

Michael Moore demonstrated this in "Bowling for Columbine". He manages to get a company to change it's behaviour without:
(i) Changing the law
(ii) Buying a chunk of the company
(iii) Witholding purchases.

There are other effective forms of protest.

Re:There are other means

[QuantumG]

Thank you. Unfortunately I think many people today have fallen into what I call the vegetarian trap. They think that buy changing their personal purchases they can change the world. It's such an easy way to make yourself feel special but unfortunately it isn't very effective at actually changing the world.

Re:There are other means

[DavidTC]

Um, no he didn't.

He managed to get a company to change its behavior or have people outraged, which would, duh, result in (i) or (iii) happening.

Re:There are other means

[16K Ram Pack]

But targetted product boycotts can make a difference to corporate behaviour. Lots of times. Sometimes, this can change small things.

Re:There are other means

[chriseyre2000]

I happen to be vegetarian. It has nothing to do with trying to change the world or make myself feel special. It just happens that at one point I was presented with a live rabbit and a knife and chose not to kill the rabbit. Some years later this turned into not having someone else kill animals on my behalf. I am merely being consistent.

Re:There are other means

[QuantumG]

Yeah, see, that doesn't follow. The whole purpose of society and commerce is to have others do things on your behalf. Many times I've sat down and tried to use 3d Studio Max (and other 3d modelling programs) and time and time again I've learnt that I just can't do it. Does this mean I should refuse to play 3d video games? If I don't am I not being consistent? You may think my argument is rediculous, but that's just because you have an emotional response to rabbits. I'll give you another example. I once had a "real" job where I got up at dawn, went out into the cold and collected rubbish from people's homes. After 4 weeks I just couldn't do it anymore. It's a hard and terrible job. Now, am I being inconsistent by putting my trash out on thursdays? No, because some people are willing to do that work on my behalf, even though I am not willing to do it myself.

w00t

[suttree.com]

My 'frist post' to Slashdot. I've submitted a few things before but this is the only one that got posted.

Shame it's a dupe though :(
Ah well, best go play some pool then.

The terror caused by draconian laws

[famazza]

The recent draconians laws aproved to 'protect' copyrighted content is showing its most terrible face, the terror caused by it.

Sonn, a simple mention in a lawsuit is about to become reason enough to avoid hiring someone, this is nothing but terror.

And some call this democracy.

Having worked in P2P...

[PktLoss]

I worked for a P2P firm for several years in a support role, and to be honest, I have never really even thought about problems like this before. The job sits proudly near the top of my resume, I even use the words "file sharing" somewhere within the job description (but I usually fall back and say "It's sorta like napster, but different" during an interview, just because then the suits get it). Even with that there I have landed jobs at a major multi-national, and for a small municipal utilities company.

I hope my luck continues and I manage to avoid people who would hold that sort of thing against me. That being said, working for the P2P company was a great experiance, I learned a lot, I managed to grow my responsibilities as I saw fit, .

I still disagree

[IceRa]

As long as an employee is doing good work, the company should not care. For example, one can be in every Toyota fan club there is and still deliver very good work in a job at chrysler. Having a specific opinion does not conflict with an emploees work, actions do. If the Guy would sell warez himself, I would agree with your opinion. But he didn't do that, he even removed his (?) web site with references to bittorrent files months ago.
Comparig a private opinion - even when statet in public - with sabotage is a bit of a long shot.

In switzerland where I live, almost any employee would go to court with such a case and probably win.

Anyway, I'll read the interview tonight at home...

IceRa

In UK law he was dismissed.

[Martin Spamer]

In UK law he was dismissed, and has a very strong position.

The Company must have a justifiable reason to dismiss somebody, your political views are not a justifiable reason. if it doesn't it automatically loses at an employment tribunal.
The Company must have a dismissal procedure, if it doesn't it automatically loses at an employment tribunal.
The Company must follow that dismissal procedure, if it doesn't it automatically loses at an employment tribunal.
The dismissal procedure cannot be summary, if it is summary, (i.e. a director taking you into a meeting room to sack you on the spot) the company automatically loses at an employment tribunal.
The Company must have an appeals procedure, if it doesn't it automatically loses at an employment tribunal.

This guy has got this company by the short and curlies, not only will he get basic damages (about 1 weeks pay per year of service) he will get compensatory damages, because the Company never had or didn't follow even the most basic dismissal procedures. He can expect to walk away from a early settlement with about 18 month pay.

Re:In UK law he was dismissed.

[/dev/trash]

1 weeks pay for a years service. he was employed for 1 week so he gets what 1/52 of a weeks pay, plus compensatory damages?

+++
My new Home

Sticky Wiki

[Doc Ruby]

Why would a corporation merely post a reply to a wiki, arguing their version, when they can merely post a reply ordering you to "stop libeling", accompanied by a lawsuit to shut you down and jail you? They don't want the wiki readership to decide the truth (that's never conclusive, anyway). They want a judge to require you to prove your assertion, or remedy your damages. Which seems more sensibile than people having to spend all our time hunting down wikis where we're mentioned, arguing to protect our reputation, never able to stop the false statements from continuing to damage as they're republished forever.

Re:Sticky Wiki

[Junior J. Junior III]

Why should a company participate in dialog when it can simply quash all dissent? It shouldn't. But that's the problem. They shouldn't have the option to quash dissent. Thus, removing that option, the best thing for companies to do is enter into dialog.

What a company wants and what is in the public's interest are two different things in many cases, and the law ought to side with the public's interest. Thus, sites where these matters are publicly discussed ought to be protected as free speech.

Libel is a separate matter. I am talking about free citizens freely speaking their minds and calling attention to abuses of employers.

Employers think that they should have the right to control what people think, do, and say even in their private lives or when employees act as public citizens. This is wrong, and harmful to free and open society.

The law presently is blinded into thinking that corporations serve the public good. If enough people gave a damn enough to effect change, this problem might be redressed. The internet is a tool by which social change might be effected. But not if people cannot be shielded from retribution when they freely exercise their rights.

And before you object in the most predictable manner, it's irrelevent whether it's government oppression or corporate oppression. It's still oppression, and a good and free people ought to renounce all such oppression, regardless of its source.

Re:Sticky Wiki

[Doc Ruby]

The libel laws are pretty good - they force people commenting in public, including in a wiki, to back up their claims. Linking criticism to evidence and citations will preempt many merely retaliatory legal actions.

Now, I don't know why you "predicted" that I'd say that only government oppression is prohibited, permitting corporate oppression. The rights protected in the Constitution are absolute rights. If a private person, or a corporation, infringes a person's rights, it is the obligation of the government to protect those rights. That is, in fact, the only certain obligation of the government.

The "corporate loophole", where these government-created artificial persons have rights, but not liabilities, is the greatest threat to our rights today. As great a threat, as grave an oppressor, as was the tyranny of the English king when we disposed of the monarchy in the United States. Such a radical correction to corporate tyranny is overdue in the US.

Re:Sticky Wiki

[Junior J. Junior III]

The libel laws are pretty good - they force people commenting in public, including in a wiki, to back up their claims. Linking criticism to evidence and citations will preempt many merely retaliatory legal actions.

So people can post content to the web and meet the required standards to avoid libel suits.

Now, I don't know why you "predicted" that I'd say that only government oppression is prohibited, permitting corporate oppression.

I didn't mean "you" specifically, but a lot of people seem to think that employer censorship is A-OK, as long as the government isn't censoring you. I'm with you in that I think this corporate neo-feudalism is the greatest threat to our rights today. I wish more people could see that.

Re:Sticky Wiki

[TedCheshireAcad]

The "corporate loophole", where these government-created artificial persons have rights, but not liabilities, is the greatest threat to our rights today.

You speak almost as if you believe that corporations don't pay taxes, or can't be sued. It's people like you that make me lose more respect for the left wing, or whatever wacko faction you're representing.

Re:Sticky Wiki

[Deagol]

If corps had to pay taxes on their gross (or individuals only had to pay on their net) income, you may have a point.

If corps "died" in 75-to-100 years, like most people, then you might have a point.

If every person in a corp were held personally responsible for the actions of said corp, and could be punished (as a matter of course, not the rare Enron-type situation), you may have a point.

As it stands, corps have far to many advantages over individuals. It's no wonder that they stomp all over people with impunity.

Re:Sticky Wiki

[cdrguru]

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. It will never be a "dialog". It can be either 1,000 voices crying out that something is unfair and one lonly voice saying you have the facts wrong - or - one lawyer crushing the oppressed masses. See, no dialog needed at all.

Employers are restricted from commenting on past and present employees - they get sued over disclosing things that employees did while employed if it makes them look bad. So, unless your previous employer can tell your new employer all about the whining, late arrivals and other stuff this turns into a one-sided "bash the employer" fest. Fair? I don't see any possibility of that.

Re:Sticky Wiki

[Doc Ruby]

Corporations pay less taxes than the people who own them would. They pay less taxes than they are even required under the law, as our gargantuan "tax incentive" laws demonstrate to anyone who looks. And the primary purpose of a corporation is to limit the liability of its shareholders.

But I didn't specify taxes or "being sued" as the unbalanced liabilities. How about corporations owning property, like a person, but unable to be jailed, like a person? Their ability to operate in multiple places at once, or be disbanded/suspended, then reconstituted? Our justice system's control of lawbreakers is largely limited to actions that affect real people, and have no effect on corporations. There's nothing "wacko" about the threat to regular people presented by corporations that compete with us.

So what's "left wing" about distrusting corporate power? I guess, since corporate power is, when embodied in a government, "fascism", anything not as far right as fascism is "left wing".

Really, fascist corporate worshippers like you are wacko. Your knee-jerk overreaction to criticism of your pet idols shows just how demented you are. Since you can only understand your own actions in terms of your own fascist faction, you think everyone else must represent a faction of their own, when we just represent ourselves. Which is why I have no respect for you, who can't even see your own interests threatened by the corporate power you worship, lashing out at people with whom you do have common interest.

Re:Sticky Wiki

[maxpublic]

BestBuy is arguably a huge and very wealthy corporation. Yet despite your arguments re libel, http://bestbuysux.org/ has been going strong for years. It stands to reason that other sites about other companies would similarly persevere. As an example, just google "Microsoft sucks" and gape in awe as page after page of possibly libelous accounts of MS's activities make themselves available for your perusal.

Max

Re:Sticky Wiki

[Doc Ruby]

Cost:benefit. Best Buy and Microsoft accept the cost (minimal) of the derogatory statements, only some of which are (probably) false. Compared to the cost of shutting them down, and being seen as "censors", even if they stopped criminal libel. The cost:benefit ratio of the status quo, x:1, is better than suing for libel, y:z, where z is >1, but y is much greater than x, so x is better than y:z.

And they might be making a mistake in that evaluation. Lots of other companies spent money buying up <whatever>sucks.com . They're either both wrong, or one is right - they can't both be right, except when it doesn't matter (see sentence 2 :).

Hoisted by their own words

[Wardish]

I didn't see any comments saying he wasn't doing his job. I didn't see any comments about him being a spokesman for his company.

I did see the statement: "The decision to terminate [Mr Hanff's] employment was made in order to defend our legitimate business interests. Mr Hanff has declared that he is opposed to copyright and intellectual property laws. Since much of our business is based around the protection of our copyright and intellectual property, we consider our dismissal of Mr Hanff entirely justified and appropriate."

Regardless of his declaired beliefs he evidentally is a good employee or they wouldn't have hired him in the first place.

I suspect that the above statement will be prime evidence that he was in fact fired for his beliefs.

The offer to pay him for 3 months instead of the week he worked was also interesting. I wonder if there was anything he would have been required to sign in that deal/payoff...

Sad

[Cervantes]

I go to /. every morning. I pop open all the new, interesting stories in tabs...
At first, I think something is stale in my cache, because that stupid "Windows will break in 12 minutes" is the top story. Queue a few minutes of checking before "Oh, nope, exact dupe."
Then I think something is strange with my tabs, because this story is exactly the same as "Share FIles? Get Fired.". Oh, nope, wait a minute, another dupe....

THe headline should really be "How /. can waste your time in new and interesting ways"

Democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy is rule by the majority, in cases such as these, the democratic right of the populace gets eroded. A computer sees all information as numbers wether it is pictures, music, words or program. All we do, when we download stuff onto our computers is take a number from one place and copy it to another.

How on earth can anyone own a number?

In another sense from the perspective of DNA, life is just numbers as well, ok there are amino acids but the arrangement of those amino acids is numerical.

For thousands of years it was thought to be perfectly moral to own other people. Slavery was thought to be a good thing by those doing the slavering. The last case of in your face slavery occured in the second world war in Germany.

Intellectual property is becoming an incidious sort of slavery. With the multinational behmoths like Micro$oft being the slave owners. Instead of owning your bodies they want to own your minds instead. The shame of it is - this so called crime of 'intellectual theft' is corrupting our judiciary. Making criminals of people who have done no wrong. The law is ceasing to be about justice for the populace, it is becoming an instrument of control used for the rights of the few and the corresponding removal of rights, for the many.

Trust me, they did him a favor

[argoff]

I had a similar situation once. I was not fired, but I quit because I just could not fit in. Why? Because it was 95 and I told my employer that SCO (their mainstay platform) is trash and that Linux was going to take over the marketplace, becuase "intellectual property" as we know it is trash too. They simply cound not handle such "communist" blasphmey.

Well, I left, beefed up on Linux for the next several years/jobs, and I think it is safe to say now that they are hurting more than I am.

Copyrights are still trash, and P2P systems are shapeing up to be as big as Linux and are also poised to be the next generation of data managment and distribution. I guarantee you that any company that deosn't expolit that for all it's worth will be DOA 10 years from now.

why the scare quotes around "corporation"?

[poot_rootbeer]

You have just stated that it's OK for employees to fire people for holding an opinion contrary to the opinion of the "corporation". That is a ridiculus assertion.

No, not at all.

Holding an opinion is not the issue. Publicly voicing an opinion in a role where you are seen as a representative of the company is.

If Steve Ballmer went out in front of the media and told everyone that Microsoft products sucked walnuts and that people should switch to Mac OS X instead, you'd better believe he'd be reprimanded if not dismissed outright. Do you think Microsoft ought to be FORCED BY LAW to keep someone who harms their reputation on payroll?

How being evil can taint a corporation

[aminorex]

Aldcliffe Computer Systems won't be getting any business from us.

Re:How being evil can taint a corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the parent company is Tribal Group plc

http://www.tribalgroup.co.uk/

So, It's not a dupe

[uberdave]

Slashdot does need to get rid of the dupes. Hell at least check links against links in older stories or something. That would at the very least ferret out the worst, most obvious dupes.

Well, Slashcode is open source, and you've got an itch and a plan on how to scratch. We await the code.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, where are my mod points when I need them?

This is the point of this whole story. I can't believe I had to scroll down this far to see someone get it.

Shaun Fanning ,Justin Frankel ,Wayne Russo

[microbrewer]

I havnt seen p2p ruin the career of Shaun Fanning it has enhanced it .

Justin Frankel used peer to peer to leave AOL and recive an exorbitant amount of money from them for doing so .

Wayne Russo is in bed witjh Andrew Lack from Sony Music these days

STOLEN COMMENT

[EMIce]

Click the link in his comment, he blatantly stole it and advertised that he did, but still got modded up.

Re:STOLEN COMMENT

[Anonymous Coward]

Click the link in his comment, he blatantly stole it and advertised that he did, but still got modded up.

It's a joke. Laugh.

I'd have fired him too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the article states, his views are not compatible with the companies. If he wants to work for the company (who incedentelly pay all his bills, food and clothes) then he needs to tow the company line or get out and work for a company with his views.

Seems fair to me.

Nothing to do with 'freedom of speech'

[Anonymous Coward]

An idea that people should be able to critize their government without fear of retribution from same. The full force of government punishment can be great and completely out of proportion to the 'crime' of criticism. The government can literaly take your life away. A company by comparison has only the power to say, "Hey, we don't want to pay for someone to say that. please leave."

I'm all for letting people say what they want but I certainly don't feel any kind of obligation to pay people to agrivate me.

Re:Nothing to do with 'freedom of speech'

[Sinner]

Well, obviously if you redefine 'freedom of speech' to mean something else, the problem goes away.

By the way, do you know what happens to people when they are unable to eat for an extended period?

Shock, Horror, Gasp!

[turgid]

You EVIL PINKO COMMIES! You UNIONISED! Don't you realise that you are TERRORISTS? You are not WITH US you must be AGAINST us! You are against FREEDOM and the pursuit of WEALTH that is a God-given right of all AMERICANS.

You UNIONISED COMMIE SCUMBAGS. It's people like YOU who are causing POORNESS and shortages of OIL.

You are probably all ATHIESTS and worship the DEVIL and quite possibly Allah.

Next thing we know, you'll all be strapping dynamite to your bellies and blowing up INNOCENT AMERICAN CHRISTIANS who are not UNIONISED.

Re:Shock, Horror, Gasp!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If 20 or so software developers actually wanting a reasonable contract from a megacorp is enough to terrorise US management, then US management must really be worried about what they're trying to impose on everyone...

This is a suprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

dvd and other media files are owned by the people that create them. Only they can distribute them. You know, the old copyright thing. The name of the concept pretty much says it all.

Programmer starts site to facilitate sharing of said copyrighted materials.

"I am not sharing the files, just facilitating the sharing by other people."

Unfortunately Programmer is inextricably bound up with the sharers, since without him, the sharing isn't possible.

Much like the driver for a group of bank robbers didn't hold up the bank, he just facilitated the movement of the money and the robbers.

Programmer goes on TV and publicly argues that there is nothing wrong with doing this.

Programmer talks about it at work with co-workers who saw him on tv.

Programmer gets fired.

Much like a getaway driver for bank robbers. If he went on tv and argued that he should not be guilty of robbery, since he didn't actually walk in or hold the gun, would probably get fired from the trucking company he works for if they found out he was a getaway driver.

Is it really so hard to grasp where his employer is coming from? I am sure the judge will have no problem understanding his arguments, or how dimwitted they are.

l8,
AC

Ever hear of 'Go Pills'?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were legal, would you buy the cheapest product knowing that the company making it provides funding for guerilla groups who kidnap children, fill them with drugs and turn them in to child-soldiers?

Drugged up soldiers are the American way. (Methinks even /.'ers will mod me troll for not 'Supporting our troops.' Good ol' blind nationalism.)

Lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing he found out what kind of company he was working for before he built up 20+ years experience with them.

Company size matters

[2901]

In a world of lots of little companies, competing for customers and competing for employees, we don't need job protection laws - just get a job with a rival, or start up on your own.

In that kind of 1776-world job protection laws can do more harm than good. They make it harder to get a new job, they make it harder to set up your own business.

In the real world, where job markets are dominated by a few large companies, we do need job protection laws to protect our freedom. Or maybe we need stronger competition laws to stop a small number of large companies dominating.

There is no need for the job protection laws to apply to small companies. Indeed, if job protection laws apply to big companies but not small one, that is in part a competition law, hindering the big companies in their competition with the small companies.