Spanish lecturer in p2p war
p2pnet.net News:- For the past five years Jorge Cortell has been teaching intellectual property for a master’s degree program at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain,
Two weeks ago he was invited by the ETSIA Student Union and Linux Users’ Group to organize a talk on p2p and Spanish copyright law, the venue being one of the university’s buildings.
“During that conference I was to analyze the legal use and benefits of the P2P networks, even when dealing with copyrighted works (according to the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, Private Copy provision, and many research papers, books and court rulings),” he says on his site.
“I was even going to use the network to ‘prove’ that it was legal, since members of the Collecting Society (SGAE) had appeared on TV and newspapers saying that ‘P2P networks are ilegal’ (sic) just like that, and to that extent I even contacted SGAE, National Police, and the Attorney General in advance to inform them about it.”
But, No Way! – said major record label and the movie studio cartels.
So, “pressured by the Spanish Recording Industry Association ‘Promusicae’ as I found out later,” the Dean tried to stop it by refusing to allow Cortell to use the university building. “So I scheduled a second one,” states Cortell, “and that was denied again. And a third time. “Finally I gave the conference on the university cafeteria, for 5 hours, in front of 150 people.”
End of story?
Not by a long shot.
The entertainment cartels have the financial, legal – especially legal – and political resources and clout to impose their desires on almost anyone and, continues Cortell, “Later on that day (May 4th, I will never forget), I received a call from the Director of the Masters Degree Program where I was teaching telling me that the Dean had called and had asked him to ‘make sure I did not teach there again’, and on a second call saying ‘it’s your choice, but also your responsibility’.
“The Director called me and first asked me to remove any link to the university from my website, and also to ‘hide’ the fact that I was teaching there. Then he told me about the pressures and threats he and the Program received (to be subjected to software licenses inspection, copyright violations inspections, or anything that may damage them). Obviously I had to resign to save his job (and everybody else’s at the Masters Program). So I did.
“But even after I had resigned, when the media (which started to pay attention to the case, as you can see in the attached links) called, the Vice-Dean of communications had the nerve to say that ‘I was never a teacher in that University, and I only taught a few classes’. Sure I was not a Professor (which I never said I was), but I taught several subjects there for over 5 years!
“It is not so important that I lost my job even though my ratings from the student satisfaction questionnaire were the highest of the whole Program, and I never violated any rule, contract, or regulation. I don’t even mind so much that I never received a direct phone call from anyone objecting to my ideas or procedures. What I regret the most is to have suffered CENSORSHIP inside my own university (in a European Union member state, of all places on earth), and as a result of pressures and threats coming from Collecting Societies and Recording and Movie Industries (on my website you have proof of all that).
“When are we going to do something about it? We can’t let them impose their failed, outdated, and inefficient business model through threats, pressures and silence. We must speak out. I am wiling to travel the world (as I am doing now in conferences all over Spain) to tell my story, and they will not silence me. The truth has to be known. But I need your help.”
Jorge Cortell
jorge (at) cortell (dot) net
jorgecortell (at) mac (dot) com
(Thanks, Consuelo, and buena suerte, Jorge)
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See:-
says on his site - Lecturer censored in Spanish University (UPV) for defending P2P networks, May 20, 2005
May 21st, 2005 at 2:10 am
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Jokebook:You_have_two_cows
May 21st, 2005 at 2:13 am
I am outraged! This is just so unfair! We need to band togther to stick up for people who have been stomped under foot like this. What can we do???
May 21st, 2005 at 3:02 pm
Boy, does this make my blood boil!!!
Its yet another example of someone who is in no way in breach of any law having both their livelihood and name besmirched by the machinations of Big Business. I am sure this gentleman has the requisite wherewithall to ensure that this will not preclude him from earning a decent enough living in the future but not everyone is sufficiently blessed with the opportunity to so do. It could be anyone, from any walk of life on the receiving end of this kind of treatment.
It strikes me that providing you have enough financial muscle you can do anything to anyone with total impunity even if what they are doing is totally legal, and it sickens me to my guts.
Yet another reason to try to screw up the cartel’s hold on our purse strings at every opportunity if you ask me.
Gits…..
May 21st, 2005 at 3:52 pm
Brings to mind the image of Louis B. Mayer, Sam Goldwyn, or Jack Warner screaming, “You’ll never work in this town again!” to the fresh-faced girl just off the train from the mid-west who committed some faux pas 5 minutes after signing her studio contract.
May 21st, 2005 at 5:13 pm
>>>Its yet another example of someone who is in no way in breach of any law having both their livelihood and name besmirched by the machinations of Big Business.
It is against the law in almost every country to give “legal opinions” when you are not a lawyer.
This lecturer is not trained as a lawyer — but he tried to “prove” the legality of P2P networks.
May 24th, 2005 at 11:52 am
I´m a spanish University Student. This teacher has enough knockledge about what he said. One of his friends, David_Bravo, is a lawyer that is trying to defend P2P users against SGAE and other groups. He is very famous here, appearing on TV, newspapers, blogs and LAN partys all over Spain. He really knows about spanish laws, and he say “Downloading or sharing music or films is not ilegal if you don´t get economic benefifs with it. Spanish law allows to make a personal backup copy of protected material (CD-Audio, DVD´s…). And sharing this personal backups it´s not illegal”.
These spanish groups want to steal money not only to P2P users: if you buy a blank CD, DVD, memory card, etc you are paying $ to this groups because you “could use” them to copy ilegal material, even if you copy your holidays photos. And now they want to get money on every DVD-Recorder, Video-Recorder, Personal Computer, and other electronic items because you can also use it to share ilegal stuff.
Sorry about my english.
May 31st, 2005 at 7:12 pm
It was revealed that Jorge Cortell did not obtain his graduate degrees from accredited universities.
All he did — went to a community college in the US (which is a level below real college or university) and then got a bunch of first year introductory continuing education courses from Harvard’s continuing ed school.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.noticiasdot.com/publicaciones/2005/0505/2305/noticias/noticias_230505-14.htm&prev=/search%3Fq%3Djorge%2Bcortell%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
Basically, he is like these first year university student who takes introductory psychology 101 — and then claims that he is an expert in psychology.