AT&T Proposes to filter the Internet.

There's a great article in today's NewTeeVee blog about AT&T, net neutrality and ... censorship (gasp!). The issue is this bit shown in the video above.

Here's a snippet from the blog post:

"Anyone who’s ever appeared on the news or a talk show can tell you that you can’t necessarily trust you will be treated fairly in editing — especially if you ramble, contradict the host or call a show’s sponsor or advertisers into controversy. Until recently, there was no way to clarify your story, unless you were lucky enough to be a television personality yourself.'
BoingBoing Gadget’s Joel Johnson knew this already.

So when he went into an interview on The Hugh Thompson Show, which airs on AT&T’s Tech Channel, an online video mini-net focused on technology, he brought along Richard Blakeley (NewTeeVee profile), posted it to YouTube and embedded the video on his blog.

Which illustrates that in a world where one-to-many broadcasting is no longer the only option, the balance of power between interviewer and interviewee has shifted.

Thompson’s show with Johnson has yet to air, and may never — after all, Johnson calls into question AT&T’s publicly stated intent to filter Internet access across its portion of the network and its stance against network neutrality, and Thompson’s show is wholly funded and distributed by AT&T."

Well...all I can say if that if you're a guest on my podcast you can pretty much count on the fact that I don't edit out anything you said (or what I said for that matter). But then again, I'm independent with no sponsors.

Anyway, now that you know, here's a snippet from Tim Wu of Slashdot in a blog post entitled "Has AT&T Lost Its Mind?". I recommend clicking to read the entire post here, just to get caught up to speed.

"Chances are that as you read this article, it is passing over part of AT&T's network. That matters, because last week AT&T announced that it is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of U.S. intellectual property laws. The prospect of AT&T, already accused of spying on our telephone calls, now scanning every e-mail and download for outlawed content is way too totalitarian for my tastes. But the bizarre twist is that the proposal is such a bad idea that it would be not just a disservice to the public but probably a disaster for AT&T itself. If I were a shareholder, I'd want to know one thing: Has AT&T, after 122 years in business, simply lost its mind?"