AT&T really doesn't like anti-Bush speech

Several days ago it was reported that AT&T had censored the rock band Pearl Jam when

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."

AT&T apologized. It was a single low-level employee acting against company policy.

Yeah, Right. Sensible people didn't believe it then. Now there is more evidence that the low-level employee was following company policy. From Timothy Karr at Huffington Post"

AT&T redeployed its hacks with a "modified" public position:

"It's not our intent to edit political comments in webcasts," said AT&T spokeswoman Tiffany O'Brien Nels. "Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases. We have taken steps to insure that it will not happen again."

Then on Monday a crew member involved with AT&T's webcasts came forward, telling Wired News that he had been issued instructions to "shut it down if there was any swearing or if anybody starts getting political."

Sounds like a censorship policy to us.

AT&T is the problem, and they don't want us to know that Net Neutrality solves a lot of the problem.

This is precisely the behavior ... Net Neutrality advocates have been warning about for almost a decade," Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig wrote about the Pearl Jam incident. "And not just (or even most importantly) in this explicit form. Much more important are the games played more subtly, to push innovation and content in the direction that benefits AT&T."

Internet Service Providers "believe they have the absolute right to control the content/application on those lines," Lessig writes. If allowed to proliferate, this attitude "will be deadly for Internet innovation."

AT&T's censorship, whether a "mistake" or corporate policy, is a rallying point for the Internet freedom movement. The great promise of the Internet shouldn't be left in the hands of those who confuse telling the truth with spinning for political and economic gain.

But AT&T can still make good on its promise to "never, ever" censor the Web by backing off its multimillion-dollar campaign to kill Net Neutrality.

No one who has watched AT&T business practices believes that they will stop fighting Net Neutrality.

Wait until the Progressives get back into position to apply Sherman Anti-Trust to the phone company - again. They are really making the case for it.