AT&T commits censorship on a Pearl Jam concert, and then tries to allay concerns over the need for net neutrality.

AT&T’s webcast of Lollapalooza on Saturday included a performance by Pearl Jam that was somewhat abbreviated. The band was doing a rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” and Vedder threw in some anti-Bush lyrics. If you were watching the concert from AT&T’s Blueroom, an online entertainment webcast, you were protected from the offending lyrics by AT&T’s own Content Monitor.

Pearl Jam has made this official statement about the incident. In the statement they raise the question of net neutrality.

“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.”

What’s most troubling about AT&T’s actions is that, in an effort to distance itself from net neutrality legislation, it’s said it doesn’t intend to block online content.

Free Market Uber Alles. Some editorialists would have you believe that those flying the net neutrality banner are just scare mongers.

What is net neutrality?

Net neutrality refers to proposed legislation that would keep major network providers (AT&T, Verizon etc) from ever blocking consumer access to certain sites. Effectively the movement wants a law that states that communications companies must be neutral toward content on the Internet.

Proponents of the act say that if it doesn’t pass, a worst - case scenario could see the Internet becoming a two tiered network. Content providers would pay a premium to the major communications companies to earn priority on the network. Those providers that don’t pay the “protection money” risk having access to their sites blocked or sharing low priority bandwidth. Hence the term Internet ghetto – describing the heavily restricted, slow, no-mans land of the free network. The commercial Internet would be brought to you by the corporations that pay the communications companies and that enjoy broadband network priority.

A movement has been growing to see net neutrality become law in the United States despite assurances from communications companies, like AT&T, that there is no need.

AT&T censoring anti-Bush lyrics on its own Broadband webcast proves they’re lying. Since the incident, AT&T has blamed the censorship on the error of an individual “Content Monitor.”

CONTENT MONITOR!

So, AT&T doesn’t intend to censor content on the Internet, yet it employs a Content Monitor. Something just doesn’t add up!