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Fired from an IP Law Firm for Anti-DRM Views?
dchallender writes to tell us that Inga Chernyak, recently featured in a VillageVoice piece entitled "Code Warriors", has been fired from an IP firm in NYC for having "incompatible views". From the article: "I was, and still am, a student interested in the scope of copyright law, and determined to pursue a career in the field. I wanted to gain an understanding both of the theory of copyright, which my work with FC provided, and its practice. The firm exposed me to the day to day operations of an IP lawyer, and I was nothing if not receptive to these lessons. I was baffled that someone saw fit to fire me over an expression of dissenting views. Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged?"
Quite simply Inga chose the wrong firm to work for, although it is evident that along the journey to enlightenment this nugget has been gleaned: At least one firm exists solely for the advancement and purpose of IP litigation. Perhaps outraged at the public display of attitude which may shy potential customers away to a firm less questioning and more aggressive in pursuing IP matters.
Best to learn about your employer early rather than find you are at odds with or questioning their business model, after you have banked your future on them. Probably also best to test the waters inside before saying things outside. The head(s) of the firm may be of the opinion that minions do not speak their mind to the press, should the public get the idea the firm or even IP Law firms in general, tend to question the legitimacy of their role.
"Of course you want to sue! How would we make a living if you didn't sue? Be reasonable, you can't have thousands of lawyers out of work, wandering the streets asking for hand-outs and eating from rubbish bins, because everyone just gets along, why, we'd sue for restraint of trade!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged
Yes in fact it does, but the wider spectrum is provided by others at universities, the EFF and other firms. Your IP firm wants to tow the party line as that is what their customers want, and it is the customers that pay the bills.
That really is what it all boils down to isn't it?
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
"Hey, I work for the DEA, but in my spare time I an editor for High Times"
-Another asshat
About the same thing.
Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged?
The problem, I think, is that you and your firm hold different meanings for the term "richer," you meaning intellectually while they think fiscally.
What does DRM have to do with IP lawyers? It seems to me that IP lawyers should be most interested in seeing infringement so they have more work to do, not supporting something that prevents infringement. It's like how some day all dentists will be out of business because of the increasing technology in dental care, such as fluoride. Why support something that will put you out of business?
I am utterly shocked to learn that there are lawyers out there whose sole motivations are money and power, and that they don't care to further advance the development of society as a whole...
(society as a hole, on the other hand...)
This guy's the limit!
You're not a greedy bastard like us, sorry. You're fired.
I've become addicted to Overlawyered and after reading some of the stunts that lawyers pull, this doesn't surprise me. I understand the argument for having dissenting views for a healthy dialog. But the truth is a lot of lawyers are in it to (surprise, surprise) make money. And if you're not going to help them make money, you can head elsewhere.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
"Over a cup of tea on Carmine Street, NYU junior Inga Chernyak explains how to break current copyright law. All it takes, Chernyak explains, is one finger on the Shift key while you put a CD in your computer, disabling corporate-installed software designed to prevent you from copying music. Just downloading a fairly purchased, DRM-protected CD from a laptop to an iPod amounts, in most cases, to a federal misdemeanor. "If I bought a CD that had DRM"--the software that blocks duplication--"I would obviate it," Chernyak says, carefully. "If there are laws I believe are wrong, I will break them." And she's just talking about Shift keys."
Let's say you own a law firm that works for sony.
Is this the kind of person you want working at your firm?
This is like working in the narcotics department of a police station and then having an article widely published about how you like to smoke dope on the weekend, giving instructions to the readers on how to grow your own.
She publicly stated that her views are not just different to, but DIRECTLY opposed to the aims of her employer. I would not trust her to not to be subversive at the company she works for, and I agree with her employer's decision.
If you have spent your life building up a law firm based on IP law, and your clients come to you to defend their IP rights and patent rights, and you've got an employee running around talking about why those laws blow, it doesn't really inspire faith in your firm. If I work for Ford and decide to write articles bashing domestic cars, I expect to be dismissed. This guy is an idiot.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
In a word: No.
You clearly do not understand business when you utter a remark like that. Business is not in the business of diversity of views. They're not out there with the intent of enriching the field. They want to get the job done that they're getting paid for as efficiently as possible.
Even if you never do anything hostile to that business, you have announced yourself as a liability. Now as long as you remain (yes you're gone because of this) you would have to have been watched over to ensure that your personal views and ethics didn't harm the business. That takes another person's time to check your work, which costs money. You're like a known anti-abortion advocate working at Planned Parenthood.
They cut their losses by cutting you. Consider it a gift. You and that business are not a good match for each other and both will be happier working with people of a like mind.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Maybe she should go to law school and work for EFF. I mean, she's a junior in college at age 19 and she got fired because it made some of her bosses uncomfortable. Happens all the time in the real world.
--b
grow richer with pro-western viewpoints in the organization?
does the GOP grow richer with kanye west in the party?
why would anyone expect an IP law firm to grow richer by considering the possibility that- gasp, horror, corporate takeover of the public domain might be a bad thing?
IP lawyers are the enemy, plain and simple
they are not neutral rhetorical territory
they are partisans with a vested interest
they make their bread and butter helping corporations extend the idea of ownership into more and more absurd and esoteric regions of intellectual and cultural spaces
you would have better luck asking a mosquito if it could change it's diet from blood to piss
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged?
Perhaps, but this isn't the bottom line.
The IP Law Firm becomes richer only if their clients feel that said firm, as a whole, is on their side of the argument. Its simply bad for business to be on the public record as having employees that maintain (potentially) conflicting views with their clientbase. If anything, I'd expect to see such an employee mantaining a keen aversion to recording any opinion on the matter, in any way.
Its like working for GM and driving your new Toyota to work: dumb.
She said "If there are laws I believe are wrong, I will break them."
She works for a law firm.
A law firm can't employ someone who is publicly advocating breaking the law.
A law firm shouldn't employ someone who, for all intents and purposes, wrote "I hate our clients." in a public forum.
We're running out of legal reasons to fire someone. Put yourself in the shoes of the firm. What do you have to gain by having an employee not be a team player to do and think in a way that meshes with what the firm's business partners' and patrons' weapon of choice to fight piracy? A liability. And where the hell do Constitutional issues come from in the article? I don't see any federal governments firing employees.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I'm president of the local chapter of NORML. I was fired from my job as a DEA agent...
I know you're trying to be funny, and you're making this up. The sad thing is people like you believe this sort of thing is OK and legal. If you are fired from a government job for your political beliefs off the job, and not because you are failing to do the job, then a serious injustice has been done. This is one step away from firing any policemen who are members of the democratic party. It is unethical, incompatible with democracy, and illegal.
If my employer intends to monitor and regulate what I do when off work, I expect to be paid my full amount, including overtime, on a basis of working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If this were done -at- work, I can understand it, but there is nothing wrong with working in a field while still advocating change. It is, in fact, one of our most fundamental rights to advocate change-and if exercising that means you can't get a job, you effectively don't have it.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
The idea, you see, is not that they would fire hire for wrongthought, but that you should be outraged that private free speech is forbidden if you want a paycheck.
Read "What's the Matter with Kansas?". The question for you is, why aren't you outraged? Don't you care that you have give up your first amendment right to free speech because your bosses want dissent silenced in all venues that they can possibly affect?
Free speech is anulled if the cost is starvation. It think it was Adams or Hancock who mentioned that that to hold a man's living hostage is to hold him hostage.
We need a new reaffirmation of our human rights under corporate rule. But that's exactly what Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas will NOT rule for. They will rule that a company can fire whom it likes, and the constitution is not applicable.
There are two schools of thought: one that the individual is supreme, and the other that the individual is supreme through the congress of trade. Jefferson vs. Adams. Individualism vs. Corporatism.
Guess where we're going.
What is the matter with Kansas, indeed. People are so indoctrinated with the business virus that they will vote against their own sacred rights in favor of businesses.
Here's the thing: businesses are fake individuals, licensed by the government (us) to exist. They are granted superpowers that no individual has, and are absolved of personal responsiblities that any individual is held to.
We can grant a business the power to live, and we can take it away if they are naughty. They will destroy anyone who actually tries it, but that's how it is supposed to work.
No business should have the power to deny individual liberties guaranteed under the constitution and under "natural law". Period.
This country needs a mental enema.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So, if its 'good for your career' its ok to be a robot?
I don't care whether it is good for my career or not, being a robot would be totally awesome.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Non-competes are also non-enforcable. Once you stop working for a firm, you are no longer subject to any of their rules. If they want to give you "gardening leave" (ie. pay you for 18 months but have you not come into work) so that you remain officially employed and subject to the contract, that's something else entirely.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Lawyers are not hired on the basis of their beliefs, they're hired because they will argue whatever you pay them to argue. A good lawyer is capable of arguing that up is actually down, a black cat is really white, and that you really didn't stab your wife and her lover thirty-seven times even though he/she knows you're guilty as sin. If you don't believe in DRM but can argue effectively for it, you're an asset to your company.
"if there are laws I believe are wrong, I will break them,"
I find it reasonable that a law firm fires an employee who states publicly that she will consciously break the law.
Making that statement without understanding the repercussions, she lacks basic common sense that I would expect for a legal beagle.
We need a new reaffirmation of our human rights under corporate rule. But that's exactly what Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas will NOT rule for. They will rule that a company can fire whom it likes, and the constitution is not applicable.
I sure as hell hope they don't make up new laws based upon their own concept of social justice. That isn't their purpose. I want them to judge claims based upon the rule of law. In this case, this is NOT a violation of any law. You are free to say whatever you believe, but to claim that private individuals can't judge you on what you say is absolutely silly. What is the purpose of speech if you can't act on it?
The idea, you see, is not that they would fire hire for wrongthought, but that you should be outraged that private free speech is forbidden if you want a paycheck.
This guy was an idiot, pure and simple. Don't work for an IP law firm and tell a reporter that you break laws that you disagree with. Telling people that you intentionally break the law is a damn good way to convince someone that you are NOT to be trusted with defending a client whom you might disagree with. If you can't stand defending someone whom you disagree with and keeping silent about your descent in public, DON'T BE A DEFENSE LAWYER.
This isn't an alien concept. If you walk into a job interview and express personal opinions that clearly are not compatible with the company you are trying to work for, they are not going to hire your. Once you get in the foot in the door that suddenly doesn't give you a free run of the mill to do whatever you want; that goes double and triple if you tell a law firm you think it is okay to break laws you disagree with.
No business should have the power to deny individual liberties guaranteed under the constitution and under "natural law". Period.
No one is being denied liberty here. He is free to hold whatever personal opinions he wants. He can tell the world about his opinions. He just shouldn't expect to not be fired. In the same way I can kick you off of my property if you come to my house and start insulting me, a company can kick you off the payroll if you are stupid enough to make remarks that are clearly not compatible with being an employee there.
He just needs to find a law firm that isn't going to be nervous about a guy who gives interviews telling reporters about how he breaks laws he disagree with.
The important point is that freedom of speech doesn't give you a free pass against people judging you on your speech. If you say something stupid, people can decide they don't want deal with you. That is exactly what happened in this case. This guy said something stupid, and the company he worked for decided that they didn't want to work with him any more. Welcome to adulthood and responsibility.
While you may be right in the example you give, in point of fact given the choice between two lawyers of equal ability, I'd prefer to hire the one that actually believes in what they're doing.
And maybe, just maybe... that's one aspect of our judicial system that's gone horribly wrong.
"A good lawyer is capable of arguing that up is actually down, a black cat is really white, and that you really didn't stab your wife and her lover thirty-seven times even though he/she knows you're guilty as sin."
I wouldn't say that was a "good" lawyer, but rather a "skilled" lawyer.
I have been thinking about this for a couple of years:
I'm not sure that it is right for any lawyer, even the guilty one's own lawyer, to exonerate a guilty person. (I'm not sure that it's not, either.)
I have thought that, perhaps, the defending lawyer should try just as hard to get at the truth as the prosecutor, but still be an advocate for the defandant. This is possible, you know.
The biggest trouble with this idea, as far as I can see, is that we would have to get a whole lot more honest to have this work at all.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
State laws on employment are moot for the federal government (the example here was a DEA agent - a federal employee working within the Department of Justice - who belongs to NORML).
The stated example is not quite a match for the original story, again because the DEA is part of the federal government. The fictional DEA agent may have a 1st ammendment case for that reason, while the anti-DRM lawyer probably does not (because the law firm is not part of the government).
One other thing:
Altering the words or application of the Constitution itself, as the Congress or Supreme court would try, doesn't NOT alter your human rights to free speech and assembly.
The Constitution, the government, or Mr. Unitary Exectutive Supreme WarMaster Bush, cannot take away your rights. They can write down that they don't think you should have them, but they would, wouldn't they.
Your rights are not granted to you by them. You, and every person alive on this planet were born with those rights, and no one can claim they don't exist. They can deny you your rights, but they can't take them away.
The framers of the Constitution, esp. Jefferson, believed that human rights were "natural". Some said granted by Providence, but that's not really important. The idea is that they exist because we believe that they do. Call it religious. Call it the ultimate ethical stand. But they exist because we say they do, because we demand that they do. WE THE PEOPLE.
Jefferson was codifying something that exists with or without the Bill of Rights. He didn't create the rights, he merely put them on paper. That was his Original Intention, kids. With the immortal 9th reminding us that just because he forgot to write one in, he didn't intend to say that it didn't exist. Privacy, no doubt, would be covered under the 9th.
Some asshat at a law firm doesn't get to nullify your human rights. Neither does Alito. No "business", which is a fake front for a bunch of men anyway, gets to deny them. Businesses are just legal structures granted by the people. They don't govern, and they don't get to pick and choose which natural rights apply to people they deign to hire.
They exist at our sufferance. We are not supplicants begging for the right to eat at their feet. They should beg us for mercy. We've forgotten who's in charge here.
The question for you is, why aren't you outraged? Don't you care that you have give up your first amendment right to free speech because your bosses want dissent silenced in all venues that they can possibly affect?
(Damn, Shihar said most everything I was going to...)
You have the right to say whatever the hell you want. However if your employer decides they don't like it they have the right to let you go peacibly. There is nothing wrong with that. You didn't give up your first amendment rights - you exercised them. Now you have to grin and bear the responsibilities for exercising them. The constitution isn't a free ride to do whatever the hell you want without repricussion. Re-read the first amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Note it says nothing about protecting you from an employer. And I'm sure the employer in question is an "at-will" employer.
This is incorrect: non-competes are an enforceable contract that can, if drafted correctly, survive the employment period itself.
They must be reasonably limited in time, space, and occupation. There are some jurisdictions which frown (a lot!) on non-competes, but please don't leave people with the false sense that they are never valid.
The absurdity of a non-compete varies with the circumstances. Compare two scenarios: McDonalds has non-compete for the guy asking "do you want fries with that"? Absurd. Head of regional sales for a company, and you're worried she might take customers with her? Not so absurd, and likely enforced.
Exactly. If he had gone to work for a doggie spa, then expressed opinions that pampering pooches was a tremendous waste of time and money, would we be upset that the owner fired him?
The person expressed an opinion that he didn't believe in what the company was doing, it would give a wise founder pause that said person would be working at his best, instead subconciously (or worse) undermining his own arguements and the goals of the firm. I can't believe this rated a story at all, much less front page.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
The proportion of comments here criticising this woman is a disgrace. Yes, the most cynical analyses of how law firms are self-serving may apply. If so, why are slashdotters so keen to defend this behaviour?
Copyright and patent law are complicated systems with (many would argue) important social functions that need to be finely balanced. A competent IP firm should be representing both plaintiffs and defendants in these systems. Furthermore, it is not clear that DRM is good, even for an IP firm's copyright holding clients, or for the copyright system as a whole. Employees who think critically about these matters are to be commended.
Perhaps an argument can be made that IP law firms benefit from having the worst and most tangled laws possible, and that regardless of the implications for cultural industries or for good policy, the firm should be encouraging chaos and DRM. It's not good to see slashdotters being so keen on this kind of free commerce.
Fixing copyright