war within a breath

AT&T Censor Anti-Bush Lyrics

08.09.07 - 01:04pm

If you want a good argument for keeping control of the internet out of the hands of big business then look no further than the webcast of Pearl Jam’s Lollapalooza performance on Sunday night.

Soon after the performance the band started getting word from fans that part of it had been censored. Webcast sponsor AT&T’s “content monitor” (doesn’t that just have an understated Orwellian ring to it?) had removed lines sung in the middle of the song Daughter when, to the tune of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall the band sang “George Bush, leave this world alone” and  “George Bush find another home”.

AT&T later tried to dissociate itself from this act of censorship by saying it was a mistake by a junior employee.

Nice try. No doubt there was just as much likelihood of a corporate employee “mistakenly” censoring pro-war, pro-government sentiments. I am sure we can expect many more such “mistakes” if the political and business elite manage to overcome opposition and start to exercise real control over what, until now, has been about as close to a free forum for self-expression as we could hope to have under the present economic system.

In a statement, the band said:

“This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

“AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.”

And added:

“What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band.”

Corporate power and corporate interests already contaminate most of the mainstream media. Don’t think for one second they wouldn’t like to do the same to the internet as a whole.

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