Sleepycatz

The Wall

Last weekend during the Lollapalooza webcast AT&T decided that some improvisation by Pearl Jam was just too questionable to be sent out over the Internets. AT&T decided that when Eddie Vedder sang out, to tune of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, “George Bush, leave this world alone;” “George Bush, find yourself another home.” it would offend some listeners and simply cut the audio.

To anyone who is familiar with AT&T, or with the debates on Net Neutrality, the only surprise should be that AT&T choose this moment and this event to exercise its authority. AT&T has been notorious in aiding the government in it’s wiretapping efforts and has received unparalleled support from the FCC to create a content carrier monopoly. In fact, one is hard pressed to think of a major FCC decision in the past five years which was not in AT&T’s favor. I am not suggesting that there is overt collusion between the two parties; simply, that AT&T knows which side it’s better off supporting in order to expand its business and eliminate competition.

AT&T’s decision to censor Vedder was probably a mistake, at this time. The result of a content manager overly eager to begin his new job as Internet supervisor. To their credit, Pearl Jam issued a strongly worded press release condemning AT&T and calling for greater support for Network Neutrality legislation and greater competition. Of course, the irony that AT&T choose to censor improvised lyrics to The Wall should not be lost on any of us. The album’s themes are ripe with overtones of fascism and repression. As Gerald Scarfe, the great illustrator, said of the album: “In the shadow of the wall, flowers turn into barbed wire; men turn into monsters.”

Make no mistake, AT&T will continue to use their facilities to control content in order to censor any type of speech which could be seen as detrimental to their business aspirations. For them, it is not a political issue, or a free speech issue but simply one of business growth and market control. For those of us who see the Internet as the new hope of free speech AT&T’s actions should strike terror into our hearts. At this time they have nearly every right to control and monitor any content delivered on their network; there is no law preventing them from simply discarding any traffic which delivers content critical of them, or the government whose support they so need. A wall of censorship has already been erected by the lack of action by our government — we are only awaiting the closure of the gates. It is time we demanded that the wall be torn down.

This entry was posted by steve on Saturday, August 11th, 2007 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Injustices, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.