As has been much covered in the last week, AT&T censored anti-Bush lyrics, blanking them out of their webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. Pearl Jam responded with a message on their official site pointing this out and connecting it to the need for net neutrality. They also encouraged fans who knew of any other incidents to come forward. I’m not sure if it was there or elsewhere, but fans did come forward, and AT&T has since apologized for this pattern of eliminating anti-Bush lyrics in webcasts:

In response to fans who claimed that the audio silencing of Vedder’s sung remarks about Bush at Lollapalooza were not unique in the history of AT&T’s Blue Room live webcasts, an AT&T spokeswoman on Friday said: “It’s not our intent to edit political comments in webcasts on the attblueroom.com. Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases. We have taken steps to ensure that it won’t happen again.”

The statement from spokeswoman Tiffany Nels did not specify what those steps were, nor did it mention what performers were involved.

One fan who contacted The Times Friday said AT&T’s Blue Room webcast bleeped the sound during performances by the Flaming Lips and the John Butler Trio at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee in June.

A public forum on Butler’s website, www.johnbutlertrio.com, includes a discussion among fans about several audio gaps during a spoken introduction to the song “Gov Did Nothin’,” which included references critical of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

A representative for the Flaming Lips said the band has received reports from fans of some corruption of the webcast of its Bonnaroo set but added that the band had not been able to review the specifics as of Friday for this story and would not comment.

WIthout getting into whether or not I believe it’s a rogue censor gone commando or company policy at some level (duh), there are a few things worth noting. One is the power of putting fans in the role of corporate watchdog. As I’ve mentioned on this blog many times, this is yet another close parallel between fandom and political communication on the net. When you have thousands of fans paying attention, and you explicitly ask them to bring things to light, things come to light that might not otherwise.

But the other thing worth noting is that Pearl Jam fans were far from united in seeing what happened here as a bad thing. Pearl Jam encouraged discussion on their message board, and they’ve gotten it — the thread has over 300 posts and nearly 10,000 views. Some people think it’s an outrage, but there are also plenty of people arguing that Pearl Jam should keep politics out of things since some of their fans are Republicans who support Bush (an argument I’ve heard a lot concerning R.E.M.), that they are blathering idiots who don’t understand what the First Amendment does and doesn’t cover, and — most surprising to me — that net neutrality is a bad thing since, they say, those companies bear the brunt of the expenses of making the internet work. Aside from what I see as misunderstandings about net neutrality in this discussion (and also I’m sure some legitimate honest disagreement about what’s fair and right), there is also a sense in many of the posts that if you make deals with big corporations, this is the price you pay and you’ve got no right or recourse to complain.

To me, this is a good argument for net neutrality, but it is also a good argument for ensuring that communication on the internet does not end up in the hands of a small number of corporations, whether the net is neutral or not. I’ve often argued that bands need to have, own, and USE their own domain rather than putting all their eggs in MySpace’s basket. I think this makes clear the need for independent webcasters and the like as well. I realize that’s much harder than a band website, but the idea that some corporate hack gets to decide what bands can say and what fans get to hear, is unacceptable.

At any rate, fans had best keep up the watchdog job.