By G.Smith
I love technology. In particular I love the Internet. I feel very fortunate to be around these days where I can take advantage of the 1’s and 0’s that make up the daily fabric of my life, for better or worse. I’ll admit it, I feel funky when I can’t check my email from my laptop. But, I’m old enough to remember the days when I had that bad taste in mouth after licking a stamp. Ughh, I’m glad I don’t have to do that anymore just to say, “what’s up, man?” to a loved one, friend, or foe. Instead I just build the callus on the tip of my phone finger by pressing the return key, (I’m a Mac user). Good times, right? Technology has treated us and myself in particular, very well. A job, entertainment, instantaneous communicating (again, for better or worse) and the sense of being on the cusp of ultimate freedom-it’s all a result of technology. The freedom to say, choose, do, rant, watch, listen, download, upload, and finally get directions to go and do the aforementioned is in my opinion, what being a citizen of the United States is all about.
Unfortunately that nasty taste of glue on my tongue is back again, but not from the lick of a postage stamp. I inadvertently licked the idea of censorship and I only had to do it once to go, “BLAH!”
Recently, August 4th to be exact, I was taking full advantage of the digital age we now live in. I was sucking up the bandwidth on my street by watching a web-cast of the Lollapalooza concert live from Chicago. With the home speakers connected to the laptop and the neighbor’s patience on a scantron, I cranked up the volume to eleven (say that again with a fake British accent and you may laugh) and took in the Hi-Fi sound and choppy video from my couch. I was in my own personal heaven watching Pearl Jam, the greatest band since 1991! As go most Pearl Jam shows, the sets are long and full of energy. As the band hammered its way through their always fresh set-lists they got to Daughter, one of their bigger hits from back in the day. I’ve seen and heard this song performed live many times, but Pearl Jam always puts a little twist in the song with a “tag” at end. It’s a little extension, sometimes an improvised jam, sometimes a cover of another song. On this night they did Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall. Ah it was great, a melodic flotation of notes that is an anthem for the inner anarchists in us all. But, then suddenly as the tag and song was reaching its climax, no sound. Silent. My neighbor’s must have thought I had retired for the night. Seconds went by, no sound but the picture remained. I cursed the technology, “Damn you!”. With my hands raised in disbelief I thought, “how could this be?”…Then seconds later, the sound of the crowd blasted back at me. “Alright, here we go!” I thought. The song was over, but thankfully the audio was back and remained for the rest of the show. I just wrote it off as a glitch, “stupid technology!” And went back to rocking, no sweat.
Fast forward a couple days and I’m back at work, using the same wonderful technology mentioned before. Reading and writing emails, doing some work then taking time to read the news when I came across a headline, “AT&T censors rock band Pearl Jam.” Wait a minute? What? I saw that show. I thought that was a glitch. Nope. Not at all, AT&T, the sponsor of the Lollapalooza concert festival, had censored the show. Someone, one-person decided that I did not need to hear the lyrics, ‘George Bush, leave this world alone‘ and ‘George Bush find yourself another home’
Hey now. That’s not supposed to happen in my country, right? I thought that was one of the many excuses for invading that…never mind, I won’t go there. But, we’re supposed to bring democracy and freedom to the world, right? But what about my freedom? When did it become okay for a corporation to determine what’s best for my ears and ultimately my entertainment?
I continued reading news pages and blogs and that word-that ugly ten-letter word, CENSORSHIP, kept popping up on my computer screen. I quickly learned from this incident that censorship is a sticky subject. Granted, AT&T has the right to control content from its own broadcast. A sensible person would agree the content in question must have been lewd, or objectionable in some way, or maybe Eddie Vedder had a wardrobe malfunction and his pants fell to the stage, leaving us with no sound. No, it was a political statement. One that I happened to agree with and welcome as a topic for discussion. Did that one person in charge, the one single man or woman that hit the dump button really not like what was being said/sung? Or did he/she know that their employer, AT&T, was one of the largest corporate sponsors of little Georgies 2004 campaign, contributing over $200,000 that election year. And that amount put AT&T within the top 20 corporate campaign contributors to the Republican party that election year. AT&T officials explained the incident as an unfortunate mistake, one that shouldn’t have happened. Hold the phone, guys. This is not the first time AT&T has done this. Preston Gralla notes this in his blog that AT&T is notorious for this practice of censoring political comments that directly refer to our wonderful commander and chief. The Daily Swarm went as far as to ask its readers, “how many musicians have had their AT&T Blue Room performances edited or censored?” The results are shocking and clearly demonstrate the grip corporations have on new media content you may or may not see. Content you should have every right to hear and or see and determine for yourself if you agree, like, hate or despise.
This form of censorship, corporate censorship, goes against all that this country used to stand for. But, it’s okay right, cause they own it. They own it all now, or at least that’s the path we are currently on. And maybe those funny YouTube videos getting passed around the office may or may not exist anymore. It will just depend on who signs the checks of that one man or that one woman with their phone finger hovering above the dump button.
Okay, well there is a bright side to this issue, but unfortunately it’s in congressional limbo. The issue at hand is Net Neutrality. Short for network neutrality, it is the basic idea of keeping the Internet free from corporate dominance. This issue is now looming over us as did the telecommunications act of 1996 and ultimately the horrid FCC ruling in 2003, which gave much more power and ownership rights to the largest of the large media corporations. Can you say Clear Channel? We now have a phone company telling me and you what we can and can’t hear. What a country! Take a look at the Center for Digital Democracy and how the current administration changed the rules for broadcast/media ownership. If this is an issue that gets your motor running take a look at Save the Internet and get involved.
I still love technology. And I will always love art and the freedom it provides for individuals, or rock bands to express themselves and ideas. I still think technology and the Internet will continue to be a great vehicle to share art, ideas and ultimately free speech. But we need to be more aware of who is in control of what we are viewing and too always question that control. It would be Un-American not to.
Whether you love or hate the band, you have to appreciate their views because they are the artists who’s rights were squashed. Also for your viewing pleasure is a comparison of the censored portion of the show and the un-edited version.
In trying not to sound too biased, Michael Copps, an FCC commissioner commented in Information Week on the incident and the overwhelming need to explore the Net Neutrality issue. It’s always good to read that the powers that be can see the big picture and not let partisan politics get in the way of true democracy, no matter how much money is given to the political parties in power.
In another great article exploring the topic, Ryan Blethens August 17th editorial Add Internet Freedom to Pearl Jam’s Greatest Hits, he wrote, “If Congress finally gets around to passing a net-neutrality law, we can thank, in part, Pearl Jam. Not solely because they were censored, although AT&T’s clumsiness helps, but for their long-standing concern about the consolidation of the media and the misuse of power…” A great point and a better read as a whole.
It’s going to take more than one lick to get to the center of censorship in America. How many licks? I don’t know. We’ll have to find out for ourselves how much we can stomach the taste of glue.
Keep on rocking in the free world-you guys.
