According to Pearl Jam AT&T censored a show at Lollapalooza. Pearl Jam was informed by their fans 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. Pearl Jam is an intelligent band and has always been on the cutting edge of both music and what record executives and the record business in general has been trying to do to music, censor it, mainstream it or stream line it for big dollars, taking out artistic integrity at all costs.
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 is Pearl Jam's response:
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.
I could not have said it any better myself.
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