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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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

[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).

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.

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.

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.

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

[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

[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: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: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.

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.

In other news...

[Tune]

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

Sigh.

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.

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...

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.

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

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)

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.