News Flash: Free Speech is Dead!
I'm a massive Pearl Jam fan, so I picked up on this one when I checked in on there site just recently. The band have been performing on the Lollapalooza festival, with one of their recent shows being webcast, portions of their performance never made it to air.
After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the "Blue Room" Live Lollapalooza Webcast.
When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.
During the performance of "Daughter" 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."
[source: http://www.pearljam.com/news/index.php?what=News#195]
You can check out the 'edited' version and the 'unedited' version below to get an idea of what was missing.
The content monitor had made a mistake? Wow! I wonder what else is being cut, edited and repackaged for us to swallow? AT&T have opened a real can of worms here, and this censorship story will be an interesting one to following going ahead.
2 Responses to “News Flash: Free Speech is Dead!”
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Free speach is definitely dead, here in England you aren’t allowed to say anything which might offend others, but then there are others which preach in the streets and are protected by the police, I can’t get my head around the whole thing I think the worlds gone P.C MAD!!!