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LifestreamAs reported by Boing Boing, Jorge Cortell was kicked out of his university and humiliated for holding a lecture on P2P and intellectual property, questioning the powers that be.
I have been teaching “Intellectual Property” (although I dislike the term) among other subjects at a Masters Degree in the Polytechnic University of Valencia UPV (Spain) for over 5 years. Two weeks ago I was scheduled (invited by the ETSIA Student Union and Linux Users’ Group for the celebration of “Culture Week”) to give a conference in 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). 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.
Source: Lecturer censored in Spanish University (UPV) for defending P2P networks
Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it seems that civil liberties around the Mediterranean aren’t exactly something to write home about. Well, we could easily end up in the same situation if we don’t watch out. In my opinion this reveals first and foremost how tightly knit corporate and university interests have become. Up to a point where they don’t dare disagree with their corporate masters. It’s bad for science, integrity and academic free speech. In the end it will erode our very civilization and thrust us into a dark age of merchantability, stagnation, oppression and quarterly earnings.
Jorge Cortell has been totally discredited in Spain after spanish bloggers found out that his CV is entirely fake. He doesn’t even have a bachelor’s degree, let alone a doctorate.
fraude-cortell.blogspot.com
Ouch. Not good. Not good at all.
Though it should be noted that I don’t have a bachelor’s degree or a doctorate in any of my two major fields either and that doesn’t stop me. But it seems fairly weird of Jorge to provide a fake CV. Whether or not it is entirely fake I do not know, I never got a look at the CV at the time.
Still I don’t know if this is relevant to the story. I never covered that angle and never considered his training. He was just some guy teaching as far as I was concerned. The implications of corporate manipulation are far worse than a single person exaggerating his CV (which also is a loathsome corporate fad for their amusement).
Our "love" of P2P — clouds our views of this issue.
Suppose Jorge wanted to give a medical lecture (and he is not a medical doctor) at UPV (which doesn’t have a medical school) on how to use apple juice to cure cancer to a classroom of computer science students (not medical school students) — and the "evil" medical community threatens to sue the university if they allow this "quack" to give this medical lecture.
There is no difference — Jorge is not a lawyer (apparantly not much of anything after the CV scandal), UPV does not have a law school and the students listening to the lecture are not law school students.
Would you consider "closing" down the hypothetical medical lecture as a corporate manipulation?
Good point. Even though curing cancer with apple juice is a bit more far fetched than informing people about P2P and legal implications, suggesting that the industry’s stance is false. But I get the metaphor and I can’t argue with that point of view.
I have to admit I am somewhat anti-establishment in many ways. Even though I despise quack medicine, homoeopathy for instance, I don’t think that we should bar homoeopaths from whatever lectures they may give. And god knows that if they were right, the established medical community and pharmaceutical companies would hardly concede easily. If it is such a hoax, the best thing to do is to let them speak and they will most likely make fools of themselves. The reluctance to allow Jorge this lecture and the aftermath could be construed as fear on the part of the system. Fear that he, and millions like him, are on to something.
Also, I think that it adds to the academic diversity in a roundabout way. Taking in just a little new influences.
I’m a bit divided on the issue. There are dangers to both approaches. A too tightly knit academic environment, especially when paid for by big biz is a terrifying thing. Especially since it will be academic inbreeding over time. On the other hand, having every clown give a lecture on just about everything from the Philadelphia Project to UFO abductions is probably not constructive either. Obviously, what Jorge presumably presented wasn’t exactly conspiracy theories, but rather a political view of sorts. Just as if he’d given a lecture on Karl Marx on a rightist campus, and people would have still showed up, but the administration gave him the boot. If a person is invited by a staff member or is himself a lecturer, and still thinks that holding the lecture is a good idea it would be folly to block it. What does one lose by allowing the lecture? By not holding the lecture you could lose a great deal of relevant information from someone who has apparently spent time examining the field.
Also, I am not sure if I want to give lawyers an exclusive on the law and so on and so forth. This boils down to issues that I would hardly want in the hands of a lawyer … a sociologist or a computer engineer perhaps. A lawyer doesn’t make the technology nor does he understand society.
I guess some would have me concede that the next thing on the curriculum would be creationism contra evolution, but I can’t see how that would be the same thing at all. IP and anti-IP are pretty much in the same dimension after all, political views on the same issue. They are applications of the same underlying principles and forks on the same evolutionary tree, whereas religion is structurally different, from an entirely different kingdom if you will. But in all fairness , even though I often express blatantly anti-religious sentiments, I suppose that it would be alright to have them too. I think the whole idea would be stone cold dead in the question of religion, gather little interest but I would have to be consequential and let them try. Also, I think there are real professors out there doing far more lobbying for this and that than Jorge. What he did was rather trivial after all. And the last thing I want is an academic inquisition.
So bottom line, I would not close down the lecture in your example. Especially since it is given so far out of line, i.e. to students of a completely irrelevant field. Something that could be seen I suppose as an applied law lecture. The lecturer may however be obliged to do it on his own time and money in some cases.
>>>So bottom line, I would not close down the lecture in your example. Especially since it is given so far out of line, i.e. to students of a completely irrelevant field.
I disagree with you 100%.
If Lawrence Lessig (stanford law professor well known for his views on copyleft issues) wants to lecture that "P2P is legal" to a classroom of law students — I would support it 100%. Because both the lecturer knows what he is talking about and the students can understand the issues as well.
Go back to my hypothetical — I would support the medical school inviting "qualified" alternative medicine professionals (i.e. not quacks) to give lectures to medical students. Again it is because both the lecturer and the audience can understand each other.
What I would not support is — the blind leading the blind. The lecturer is not qualified to give the talk and the audience is not educated to understand the talk.
>>>By not holding the lecture you could lose a great deal of relevant information from someone who has apparently spent time examining the field.
You are giving Jorge too much credit on his expertise.
For 5 years, Jorge taught at this "professional" masters program at UPV.
http://www.mag.upv.es/titep…
What kind of a masters degree program gives out "Certificado de asistencia" (certificate of attendance)? He is not a real professor with not a real CV — teaching not a real course.
This summer he is teaching 3 hours in a quickie 5 day summer course. It’s just a "money grab" for the university.
http://univerano.ua.es/curs…
You seem to be an intelligent guy. I bet you that if you spend 2 weeks reading Lessig’s website and Eben Moglen’s website — "cut and paste" a few of their ideas into a killer powerpoint presentation and show it to a bunch of 19 year old computer science student (who doesn’t know anything on IP law), they would think that you are a "giant in intellectual property law" also (especially since you would quote Lessig and Moglen, supporters of copyleft and open source). But do you really know what Lessig and Moglen is talking about? The answer is no.
But this is what Mr Cortell is doing — he does not know anything on IP law, he "cut and paste" a few real copyleft expertise’s work into a killer powerpoint presentation and show it to 19 year old computer science students (who does not know anything on the subject except that they love to download music off the web).
Speaking of homeopathy, try a google search of university of brantridge (a fake university where Jorge obtained his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD.) and homeopathy.
All fakes, all quacks, all the time.
I do not have full insight into Jorge’s actual presentation. Maybe it was technically a hack lecture, that could have been done better by Lessig or whoever, but it is likely the only anti-IP lecture that these students are going to get. So that justifies the lecture in my book. I know, it’s a cheap shot, but someone has to take it, for one he showed exactly what happened when you step out of line, and how people will immediately shift focus from the technical issue to the issue of personal credentials and his person.
But naturally, the fiddling with his CV and the more or less useless courses and "degrees" that he has filled it with is of course bothersome. It surely doesn’t help.
I still feel that it is beneficial to go beyond the curriculum. Universities can be terribly rigid and lumbering institutions in some cases. I don’t think we should restrict lecturing in this case to the "qualified" (because who are those? the industry? lawyers? or a token dissident like Lessig?) or limit the audience to law students. They are never going to change society anyway. If anything, they will be part of a social elite that will conserve power and knowledge. Ironically, higher education is among the better ways we have of controlling dissent and screening people. A university degree is a stamp of approval insofar that most people are "dumbed down" and properly socialized.
This is such a controversial and fundamental issue that it concerns everyone, and something that should perhaps be given (in a balanced way with arguments and counter-arguments) to ALL university students, who after all will go on to produce some sort of IP through research. These are issues that we cannot leave in the hands of the powers that be or reserve for those whom it may concern. This is a revolution where information has to reach grass root level. Maybe Jorge is a hack but he is one of the few who stood up and questioned the established truths. This is not some far flung theory that involves apple juice, watered down medicine or little green men. This is as bizarre as banning a certain political view from political philosophers. It is a fact that corporate and private power backed by protectionistic governments have enacted regulations that have no basis in reality in order not to go out of business, at least not for a little while longer. The US being the foremost persecutor of this kind of nonsense. And if we are ever going to turn it around and get our freedom back, we’re going to have to let people like Jorge speak, or we’ll see our lives diminished over time to having to pay for the air we breathe and the ground we walk on, licensing the very photons we perceive.
As for homeopathy, I do get "Brantridge Forest School, Sussex, England" (University of Sussex at Brantridge?), but Brantridge (Hawaii) is not referenced in that context. Except where it is noted that both institutions failed on credentials. Maybe they have some sort of connection.
>>>The US being the foremost persecutor of this kind of nonsense.
Jorge is an american — he grew up in the states, went to high school in the states, went to a real community college in the states — and then went to spain to do all this fake stuff. He is trying to make money by lying and cheating — he is the reason why people have bad impressions of americans in the first place.
The fact is that he tried to use the internet media to boost his celebrity so that he can make more money on speaking engagements.
When the story of his "firing" got to slashdot’s website — then his trouble began. After spanish bloggers started reading the slashdot comments, all hell breaks loose.
http://yro.slashdot.org/com…
http://yro.slashdot.org/com…
The simplest and most logical explanation is almost always the correct one. He is a hack who lived by the sword (the internet media hyping), and died by the sword (the internet media). The lesson is that in the internet age — you can only be a "local con artist" because your con will be discovered if you get too famous and too high profile.
>>>This is such a controversial and fundamental issue that it concerns everyone, and something that should perhaps be given (in a balanced way with arguments and counter-arguments) to ALL university students, who after all will go on to produce some sort of IP through research. These are issues that we cannot leave in the hands of the powers that be or reserve for those whom it may concern.
I have a major problem with that. Just read any slashdot discussion on any given day — and there will be hundreds of computer geeks who claim that they know how to interpret GPL, open source, copyright and patents. They are the people who "cut and paste" GPL codes into their employer’s software programs WITHOUT telling their supervisors and asking their employer’s lawyers for permission.
Not knowing anything on this subject — is much more safe for everybody than people who ‘THINKS’ that they know this issue.
As for arguments and counter-arguments — a lawyer is trained to argue BOTH sides. Samething for good PhD’s for every other subject — they can also argue for both sides. You don’t need to listen to unqualified hacks to get the counter-arguments.
So maybe they are a bunch of know-it-alls on Slashdot. And maybe they all claim to know the lay of the land. But in essence they all have one thing in common, they despise power and media corporations to some extent.
I think there are a few other reasons that we have bad impressions of Americans
And I didn’t even know where Jorge grew up, that is also something I didn’t care about at the time. I think it’s far fetched to say (if that is what you’re saying) that Jorge moved to Spain and made an ass of himself, in order to give a bad impression of Americans or alternatively to point of the madness of IP so that people would (although rightly so) trace the tradition of protectionism historically back to the US.
I’d rather give my money to Jorge than having some lawyer come enriching himself. Like all the other people work for free. At least with Jorge he is ideologically on our side.
I could argue that a lawyer is also someone who thinks he knows the subject. Because he has been told so. Because he has read the law. Because he is a minion of the system. Sure, we hold him in higher esteem and he is socially speaking way ahead of the self-made computer geek of Slashdot. But does that make him right? No. What it makes him is the guardian of the system and an expert on the irrelevant. I’m sure they COULD argue for both views, but they’re not going to are they. Most of them will look in their "bible" as it were and explain in a slightly disparaging way that this and that is illegal. My belief is that through various elaborate checks and barriers, the most vocal antagonists of the system are eliminated. Most through "free will" since it’s taxing to oppose power, many as early as primary school. If they get as far as university the powers that be can either buy their silence or relax since there are so few of them anyway. It’s worth looking into. I can’t be more precise than that because I haven’t done the homework on this phenomena. But I am convinced that there is filtering going on in order to keep the higher echelons stable and pure. It’s a long shot I know, but it’s safer to take in a few "hacks" than to keep things running.
If one should venture back to Jorge for a moment, I still think that what happened was despicable. Especially given that afaik, the lecture was given on an invitation from some student group. No, I’m afraid there is no way to excuse the university trying to stop the lecture. It’s not like he stopped regular classes and forced the students to listen to an alternative lecture. And that he could be accused of not sticking to the course planning.
A student group could invite Joe Sixpack and still get away with it, as long as Joe doesn’t break real or perceived laws or threaten the powers that be.
This is a slippery slope indeed. Every month there are special lectures, off the curriculum on campuses all over the world, some are peripheral and seldom are someone’s credentials examined with great detail. The aftermath of this could mean everyone questioning everything. Don’t like the economy lecture, well close it down. Don’t like the multi-ethnicity week, well sink that one too. There are two issues here, whether one should be tolerant enough to allow opinions that may not fit inside the box or the hegemony AND whether or not Jorge’s academic record is exaggerated enough to call him a fraud. There are plenty of examples, outside of IP and Spain, where lecturers and researchers have been slammed not following the rules, i.e. inviting people or expressing opinions that don’t sit well with the establishment. And it is in that context this ought to be.
You do have a great deal of confidence in the system. I’m afraid I wont take my chances and put my future in someone else’s hands, especially those (legal experts) that are so clearly indoctrinated and part of the hegemony and risks actually losing power if things were to change.