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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"
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
So, you're saying that just because an employee murdered someone you'd fire him? Just like that? Where's the loyalty these days?
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
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.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
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)
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
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.
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)
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.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
"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.
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?
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.
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.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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...
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.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Well,
/.'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.
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
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
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.
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.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
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