ATT's Pearl Jam story unravels

Last week ATT admitted muting Pearl Jam’s political lyrics during its exclusive webcast of the band’s Lollapalooza show on Aug. 5. ATT rightly apologized, said the silencing was a mistake by a content monitor, and claimed that the company “does not censor or edit performances.” ATT spokeswoman Tiffany Nels also told the Los Angeles Times that it uses the content monitors to block “excessive profanity.”

After being pressed by fans and reporters, ATT admitted on Friday it had muted political lyrics during the webcasts of other bands on its “Blue Room” site. ATT said in a statement: "It's not our intent to edit political comments in webcasts on attblueroom.com. Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases. We have taken steps to ensure that it won't happen again." Earlier this week, Wired News reported a “Blue Room” crewmember said censoring political speech was a policy for the webcasts.

Fans of Flaming Lips, John Butler Trio, The Nightwatchman and a number of other bands came forward saying the bands' political lyrics/banter had been silenced during other "Blue Room" broadcasts. (Video of these incidents has not surfaced yet, but if you have please post links on the comments section of the blog. We'd love to see it.)

One instance of muting a band’s political comments might be chalked up as a mistake, but multiple instances point toward something much more sinister: a policy of silencing political speech.

The silencing is especially troubling because it appears the content monitor ATT hired to watch the Pearl Jam webcast did not do what ATT claimed he was there to do: monitor inappropriate speech. As we mentioned earlier this week, FMC counted 20 instances of curse words during the Pearl Jam webcast that were not censored by the content monitor, yet Eddie Vedder’s anti-Bush lyrics were muted.

ATT content monitor does not mute curse words during Pearl Jam webcast

The content monitor ATT hired to remove inappropriate language from the webcast of Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza show did not edit out 20 instances of curse words during the webcast.

ATT claimed it had hired the content monitor to remove curse words and other less than family oriented material from its "Blue Room" webcasts, but the content monitor instead silenced Pearl Jam's anti-Bush lyrics. The revelation casts doubt on what exactly the role of the content monitors was during the webcasts.

The intrepid Eliot Van Buskirk is now reporting over at Wired News that there was a policy in place to censor political speech during ATT's webcasts of concerts at its "Blue Room" site. Wired News quotes a crew member during one of the webcasts as saying:

"I can definitively say that at a previous event where AT&T was covering the show, the instructions were to shut it down if there was any swearing or if anybody starts getting political. Granted, they didn't say to shut down any Anti-Bush comments or anything specific to any point of view or party, but 'getting political' was mentioned."

The uncensored curse words and the crew member claim casts some serious doubt on ATT's rickety story that it did not have a policy of censoring bands during its "Blue Room" webcasts. After admitting it silenced Pearl Jam last week, ATT admitted on Friday that it had also silenced the political comments of other bands during its "Blue Room" webcasts. ATT's story now has more gaps than the performances it censored.

Did ATT censor Pearl Jam and can we trust them with the Internet?

Pearl Jam closed Lollapalooza in Chicago on Sunday night with what was by all accounts a rousing performance, but if you weren’t there you didn’t see the whole show. According to a Pearl Jam press release, ATT, which had the exclusive rights to webcast Lollapalooza via its “Blue Room,” silenced a piece of video from its live webcast that featured anti-Bush lyrics.

During the song “Daughter,” Eddie Vedder sang “George Bush leave this world alone" to the tune of “Another Brick in the Wall.” When he repeated the line again and then sang "George Bush find yourself another home" the sound was muted, even though it can clearly be seen Vedder was singing. The editing was first discovered by Pearl Jam fans, who notified the band.

According to the release, when asked about the incident, ATT told Lollapalooza that one of its content monitors had made a mistake. Whether it was a mistake or blatant censorship, the incident is a cautionary tale that shows what can happen when one company has unfettered control over Internet content.

Of course, ATT and other big telecoms have been pushing for several years to increase their control over Internet content. They want to create an Internet where they determine which web sites download the fastest. The Pearl Jam incident gets to the crux of why this is dangerous.

If this kind of incident happens during a webcast of a concert, imagine what type of power ATT or any other telecom might wield if they determined which web sites you are able to effectively access? Would they degrade access to web sites that feature political views they don’t agree with, or perhaps, ones that compete with their commercial interests? We don’t know and we don’t want to find out.

This is exactly why 713 musicians through the “Rock the Net” campaign, liberal groups like Moveon.org, conservative groups like the Christian Coalition, and thousands of others have been pushing for “net neutrality.” Net neutrality means the web remains a level playing field – no single company (or anyone else for that matter) has the power to block or degrade the download speeds of any web site.

We need a law or rules that positively affirm the principles that have made the Internet open and democratic. We shouldn’t wait until ATT or anyone else decides what we see, read or hear on the Internet. By then, we might not even know what we’re missing.

Here's the silenced version:



This is an unmuted version shot by a fan at the concert. The important section begins at the 1 minute mark: