FCC Commissioner: Pearl Jam censorship linked to Net Neutrality fight

By Jon Stokes | Published: August 17, 2007 - 01:56PM CT

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, fire-breathing advocate of network neutrality regulation and opponent of media consolidation, has taken a stand on AT&T's now infamous censorship of Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder's anti-Bush remarks at Lollapalooza. In an interview with OpenLeft.com's Matt Stoller, Copps supported the idea that there's a link between AT&T's deletion of Vedder's political comments from a webcast of the concert and the network neutrality fight that's brewing in the halls of Congress.

"Events like this are connected to the larger issue of network neutrality, so it is very very important," Copps said in response to a question about whether or not AT&T's censorship of Vedder has any implications for network neutrality. He went on to say, "So when something like the episode occurs with Pearl Jam that you're referencing that ought to concern all of us... because if you can do it for one group, you can do it to any group and say 'Well, it's not intentional,' and things like that. But nobody should have that power to do that and then be able to exercise distributive control over the distribution and control over the content too.

In the interview, Copps followed other network neutrality supporters in seizing on the incident as a prime example of the need for government regulation of companies like AT&T, in order to prevent them from censoring political speech on the larger Internet. This is in spite of the fact that from a purely technical standpoint, AT&T's censorship of Vedder on its own webcast, which is technically content that AT&T "owns" and is responsible for, has little apparent connection to network neutrality. After all, not even the most ardent net neutrality proponent would suggest that a company shouldn't be able to censor its own streaming webcasts—content that it funded and that it owns.

However, in spite of the lack of a real technical or even a policy-level connection between what AT&T did to Vedder and the kind of router-level traffic shaping that net neutrality's supporters are opposed to, the censorship of Vedder's anti-Bush speech is so germane to the political, "people vs. the powerful" side of the network neutrality debate that it is a PR gaffe of the first order.

AT&T's trust problems

I said in a previous article on network neutrality that the efforts of some to turn net neutrality into a civil rights and free speech issue was a really bad idea, but AT&T seems bound and determined to make that connection all by themselves.

The basic stance of AT&T and other telcos in the network neutrality debates is this: trust us to carry your network traffic— your video, your emails, you web surfing, and all the other stuff that you watch, read, hear, and say to friends, family, and the world via the Internet; trust us to handle the connections that you make online, be they personal, political, religious, frivolous, or whatever; trust us not to use our power over the network to insert unknown third parties and agendas into those connections that you make with the world.

The tenability of this "trust us" premise was already damaged by revelations that AT&T has set up secret rooms at some of its major backbone facilities that let the NSA snoop the nation's network traffic as it goes over the wire, but (unfortunately) not everyone cares so much about faceless NSA snoops picking through their e-mail. However, this new incident, in which either the company or a party acting on the company's behalf has censored political criticism of one of the most unpopular presidents in American history, is bound to resonate with a whole new swath of the public.

What's more, it appears that such political censorship is a pattern for AT&T. The Daily Swarm brings word from concertgoers, reporters, and even AT&T itself that the network has edited out the political commentary from webcasts of a whole host of concerts across the country. The bands affected by the censorship range from The Roots to The Flaming Lips, and fan emails are still pouring into blogs and media outlets alleging as-yet unreported censorship incidents.

So this censorship scandal is still growing, and politically (if not technically) it strikes at the heart of the "trust us with your communications" premise that forms one of the two central pillars of the telcos' attacks on network neutrality legislation. (The other pillar is, "government regulation is scaaaarrryyyy... big, scary regulations stifle the free market...") If it continues to widen and gain real traction with the public, the concert censorship scandal may turn out to be the own goal that tips the net neutrality game into Copps and company's favor.