Pearl Jam and Censorship
Last week, Pearl Jam announced that AT&T had edited a portion of their Lollapalooza webcast. During the performance, the lead singer made some harmless statements against George Bush. AT&T admitted they did so, but it was a mistake. Many people don’t agree with them, and it renewed some calls for… net neutrality?
Net neutrality is the idea that the government should mandate that internet service providers must treat all data bits over their network equally. Email bits must be treated the same as video bits, the same as gaming bits, etc. Not only is this a poor way to administer a computer network (different data formats, like video, have heavier demands than others), it ignores the private property rights of the individuals who own the computer network. If you own computers or a computer network, you should have the right to control what is done with your property — even if you allow other people to use your property access the internet.
What is the relation between AT&T’s edits of Pearl Jam’s performance and the government regulation of ISPs? Well, net neutrality advocates are using this as an example of why we can’t trust big telecoms to administer their networks in a way that best serves the “public interest.” Big telecom companies like AT&T have a duty to provide individuals with free and open access, and when they edited Pearl Jam’s song lyrics they demonstrated the fact that they can and will edit content according to their own standards. That, according to net neutrality advocates, is censorship and a violation of their rights, especially their free speech rights. AT&T is not acting responsibly, so the government should step in and mandate how they run their business. And the first step should be to control how they handle network traffic.
The missing context in their complaint is the fact that the so-called “censorship” Pearl Jam faced was a private organization that did not want to play their lyrics
And, like any person or organization who exercises his or her own rights, AT&T will have suffer the consequences of their actions. The news release from Pearl Jam offered an appropriate quote from Edward Whitacre, former CEO of AT&T:
Any provider that blocks access to content is inviting customers to find another provider.
If you are a Lollapalooza organizer and you don’t like the fact that AT&T edited the performances of your bands, are you going to go with AT&T the next time you need a company to broadcast your event online? Not likely.
Anyone who wants to protect the right to free speech should be against net neutrality. Net neutrality attacks one of the essential requirements for free speech: private property. The right to free speech can’t stand up for long without the right to private property. If you want to write something, you have to be allowed to own pen and paper. If you want to write something on the internet, you have to be able to own a computer. And if you want to proclaim your views to the world, you need to be able to own a soapbox to stand on. Net neutrality attacks the concept of private property by demanding that the government strip telecom companies of their right to control their own computer networks. Yes, it will take more government regulation than net neutrality to affect our right to free speech over the internet, but net neutrality advocates have no problem with that. Net neutrality, by itself, won’t bring about the cheap, fast, and easily accessible internet that net neutrality advocates claim to want. Their recent calls for government action in relation to the spectrum that television companies is proof of that.
Finally, I have to respectfully disagree with the guys over at Hands off the Internet when they say that this situation has nothing to do with net neutrality. Net neutrality advocates want others to believe that government intervention is necessary for the internet to work, and cases like this one provide them with ammunition. Also, the best argument against what Pearl Jam and its supporters is the same argument that should be used against net neutrality: People should be free to own and control their own property.
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