AT&T’s Blue Room Has Its Own Standards Of “Working Blue”

noah | August 9, 2007 8:28 am
Lollapalooza non-attendees who tuned into the live stream of the show on the AT&T Blue Room the other night didn’t only miss the chance to swelter in the Chicago heat, they missed a bit of the Pearl Jam set that was captured above: An overzealous “content monitor” who was watching Pearl Jam’s Lollapalooza performance on Sunday night bleeped out anti-George Bush statements that Eddie Vedder threw into into the band’s performance of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall.”

The bleeping was initially noticed by some Pearl Jam fans, who notified the band; Pearl Jam is now leading a search for other artists whose content has been censored by AT&T, although the associated thread is now devolving into an argument over whether or not private companies have the “right” to bleep out whatever content they want to stream. (Presumably the people who are saying “so what man, it was like an awesome concert!!!111!” don’t really listen to Pearl Jam for their lyrics.) For its part, AT&T is casting censorship blame on a “webcast vendor,” and they’re claiming that they’ll have the full, uncensored performance up soon–or at least as soon as they can figure out how to incorporate YouTube footage into their video in a somewhat slick manner.

LOLLAPALOOZA WEBCAST: SPONSORED/CENSORED BY AT&T? [pearljam.com, via Future of Music Coalition Blog]

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