[Infowarrior] - Pearl Jam statement on ATT censorship

[Richard Forno]

LOLLAPALOOZA WEBCAST: SPONSORED/CENSORED BY AT&T?
08.08.07

http://pearljam.com/news/index.php?what=News#195

After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us
that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by
AT&T during the "Blue Room" Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that
portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their
content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of "Daughter" the following lyrics were sung to the
tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but were cut from the
webcast:

- "George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung); and

- "George Bush find yourself another home."

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.

Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the
internet are now being debated under the umbrella of "NetNeutrality." Check
out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this
issue.

Most telecommunications companies oppose "net neutrality" and argue that the
public can trust them not to censor..

Even the ex-head of AT&T, CEO Edward Whitacre, whose company sponsored our
troubled webcast, stated just last March that fears his company and other
big network providers would block traffic on their networks are overblown..

"Any provider that blocks access to content is inviting customers to find
another provider." (Marguerite Reardon, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: March 21, 2006, 2:23 PM PST).

But what if there is only one provider from which to choose?

If a company that is controlling a webcast is cutting out bits of our
performance -not based on laws, but on their own preferences and
interpretations - fans have little choice but to watch the censored version.

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.

The complete version of "Daughter" from the Lollapalooza performance will be
posted here soon for any of you who missed it. We apologize to our fans who
were watching the webcast and got shortchanged. In the future, we will work
even harder to ensure that our live broadcasts or webcasts are free from
arbitrary edits.

If you have examples of AT&T censoring artist performances around political
content, it's a good thing for everyone to know about. Feel free to post
examples on the official Pearl Jam Message Pit.