There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.
George W. Bush
17 September, 2002
It seems like just yesterday that AT&T was telling us that their decision to silence Pearl Jam's critique of President Bush during their webcast of the Lollapalooza concert was an "unfortunate mistake" that shouldn't have happened and wouldn't happen again. Hopefully, it won't. But based on the past behavior of AT&T, I'm not making any large bets on that.
That's because it turns out that the censorship of anti-Bush material wasn't an isolated incident restricted to the Pearl Jam show. Now, at least according to AT&T, it's something that "has happened in the past in a handful of cases." Each of those cases, by the way, appears to have involved not merely the censorship of political speech, but the censorship of political speech critical of the current administration. There are a grand total of zero reports of cases where any other sort of political speech was censored.
AT&T continues to insist that all of this is no big deal, and certainly no reason people need to be worried about the possibility that companies - such as, say, AT&T - might use their ability to control the movement of data to exert control over the types of content that internet users are permitted to access. ABC news quotes AT&T spokesman Michael Coe as calling Net Neutrality - a movement calling for legislation that would prevent internet service providers from giving preferential service to some forms of content but not others - "a solution without a problem," adding, "We have said repeatedly over and over that we will not block customers' access to legal content. We've said that in front of Congress. We've stated it as conditions of our merger with Bell South."
Guess what, AT&T? We found the problem. Turns out it's you.
AT&T may have said "over and over" that they won't block access to legal content, but it sure looks like they did exactly that. The last time I checked, it was still legal to criticize the President. (Of course, given the spine of our Democratic Congress, it might be a good idea to double check. Hang on... OK, as of today it's still legal.) Pearl Jam included criticism of the President in their song. AT&T blocked access to that legal content.
It's possible - in fact, it's likely - that nobody at AT&T headquarters wanted to censor anti-Bush speech. It still happened. In fact, it looks like it happened on at least three separate occasions. Even if the only person who wanted to keep people from hearing bad things about the President was some right wing nutjob who was hired as a "content engineer" (an Orwellian job description if there ever was one, but I digress) for the concerts, AT&T still bears the ultimate responsibility.
It's unlikely, given their history of opposition to Net Neutrality, that AT&T will be willing to change their position unless serious external pressure is put on them. Personally, I think that Apple is just the company to do that. At the moment, AT&T is the only authorized provider of phone service for the iPhone. Given AT&T's reckless disregard for the necessity for a free flow of ideas, perhaps Apple should rethink that.
You can contact them at:
Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
408.996.1010
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