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MrJ in OZ wrote:

Why is it that conservatives seem to have no problem with this sort of liberty supression, yet when the market is supervised they have a smurf fit crying freedom foul.

Because it's not the gov't doing it.
It's a privately owned web site.
Why should they have less right to determine their content than DailyKos?
If they want to keep political rants out to avoid ticking off customers it ought to be their right.

matt wrote:

It's my right to shout you down because I'm a large corporation, which the government considers human, and I have billions of dollars and no competitors for POTS, so if you want home phone service, you have no option but to pay me money.

That's what freedom's all about. It's totally not like communism, where you only have one choice for phone service and the people with the power use it to shout you down and silence opposing political views.

No siree, not the same at all.

Wow.

Perhaps other bands will say "no" to doing performances for AT&T if they suspect that their lyrics might be censored.  Or are they too busy shilling their latest record to care?  Or are they contractually obligated to go and play where their masters tell them?

When it all comes down to brass tacks this isn't about politics, it's about money.  AT&T was worried that if they offended some customers they would go get their service elsewhere and they'd lose all that great cash.  And you'd be pretty hard pressed to convince me otherwise.

Farmerkev wrote:

MrJ in OZ wrote:

Why is it that conservatives seem to have no problem with this sort of liberty supression, yet when the market is supervised they have a smurf fit crying freedom foul.

Because it's not the gov't doing it.
It's a privately owned web site.
Why should they have less right to determine their content than DailyKos?
If they want to keep political rants out to avoid ticking off customers it ought to be their right.

Oh really. Very interesting indeed. Some sheeple should really start being more vigilant.

kev, you are aware that they ARE ALREADY TIED TOGETHER, right?

http://www.wired.com/science/discoverie … 6/04/70619

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.

The very fact of the secrecy of what goes on in the innards does not mean that is not what happened.

A switch pulled could 'poof' these forums, you know. Or, any given blog. Or, the whole blasted Net if they wanted to.

It's a brave new world dystopian order. Get used to it.

The testing (in my view) for this was done back around maybe 1988? (Good memory, B/B).
Robert Morris jr. -
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/articl … -worm.html

The Robert Morris Internet Worm
The book by Hafner and Markoff (noted here) gives an outstanding a history of the case.

The following short overview is taken from Zen and the Art of the Internet, by Brendan P. Kehoe:

On November 2, 1988, Robert Morris, Jr., a graduate student in Computer Science at Cornell, wrote an experimental, self-replicating, self-propagating program called a worm and injected it into the Internet. He chose to release it from MIT, to disguise the fact that the worm came from Cornell. Morris soon discovered that the program was replicating and reinfecting machines at a much faster rate than he had anticipated---there was a bug. Ultimately, many machines at locations around the country either crashed or became ``catatonic.'' When Morris realized what was happening, he contacted a friend at Harvard to discuss a solution. Eventually, they sent an anonymous message from Harvard over the network, instructing programmers how to kill the worm and prevent reinfection. However, because the network route was clogged, this message did not get through until it was too late. Computers were affected at many sites, including universities, military sites, and medical research facilities. The estimated cost of dealing with the worm at each installation ranged from $200 to more than $53,000.

The program took advantage of a hole in the debug mode of the Unix sendmail program, which runs on a system and waits for other systems to connect to it and give it email, and a hole in the finger daemon fingerd, which serves finger requests. People at the University of California at Berkeley and MIT had copies of the program and were actively disassembling it (returning the program back into its source form) to try to figure out how it worked.
...

That is also 'different' - yet, again in my view, wholly salient to the issue. With almost any computational issue, things are deeply intertwingled:
http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/His … lson,_Ted/

What do you think Net Neutrality is about? Certain packets being more equal than others. Means they all are tagged.

All telcoms are obliged to cooperate in this turning over their  user data upon request. The request is virtually openended. Permanent.

I agree with the vigilance point. This is an icecube. The iceberg is over the horizon.

Beagle/Bro. wrote:

kev, you are aware that they ARE ALREADY TIED TOGETHER, right?

No, at issue is wether or not a private company can censor information on their private website.
Totally separate are any actions one specific company has taken in conjunction with the federal gov't.
Far too often here, on a variety of subjects, people advocate actions on the basis of the specific and not on the broader principle(s) involved and the precedents those actions will have.

MrJ in OZ wrote:

Why is it that conservatives seem to have no problem with this sort of liberty supression, yet when the market is supervised they have a smurf fit crying freedom foul.

What makes you think conservative have no problems with this?

OTOH - AT&T is a private company has the right to sensor what they want.
No crime was committed by them.
AT&T didn't take away any of Pear Jam's liberties - they simply did not allow their network to be used to get the message across. Nothing illegal about that at all.

Networks do it all the time - journalists show what they want to show and cut what they don't want to show, for example.

Censoring Pearl Jam and illegal wire-tapping are two very, very different things.

Yes, recent decisions regarding "faith-based" groups have highlighted something. The Republican drive to privatize government may be a broad plan to circumvent public oversight and Constitutional limitations.

I don't know, man, we live in a society where TV can show a human being skinned alive, but can't have a character react by saying, "smurf!"

Censorship is part of everyday life.  As is "sanitizing" language: it's not called a "war," it's called a "conflict."

I'm not saying it's good.  Personally I think you should be able to say whatever you want to on any sort of broadcast media or in print.  Sadly, that's not reality.

And if this is some sort of repeated behavior on the part of AT&T, why didn't Pearl Jam say, "no thanks" to the gig?

Lesson learned: AT&T is a bunch of asshats.  Let's not work for them.

resedit wrote:

Tallgeese wrote:

Yes, recent decisions regarding "faith-based" groups have highlighted something. The Republican drive to privatize government may be a broad plan to circumvent public oversight and Constitutional limitations.

Um, OK.

You'll note that faith based groups that receive any government funding at all have to comply with the federal and state laws regarding their programs - but go ahead and be suspicious.

So you totally missed the ruling that the Salvation Army could discriminate against homosexuals and continue to receive federal funding, since to do otherwise would compromise "the character of the organization"?

Yeah, totally unfounded suspicions.

resedit wrote:

The salvation army won't HIRE homosexuals.

And isn't that discrimination?

Aren't employers not suppose to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation?

mo' ron wrote:

resedit wrote:

The salvation army won't HIRE homosexuals.

And isn't that discrimination?

Aren't employers not suppose to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation?

Religious institutions must be allowed to because of the first amendment.

The only way the Salvation Army could hire confessing homosexuals and not be hypocritical is for them to change their position. Government should not have that kind of influence over a religious organization policy any more than a religious organization should have that kind of influence over government policy. It's the same first amendment that you guys claim should be protected.

The charitable acts of the salvation army do not discriminate, and the salvation army spends far more funds on them than they receive from the government. You can see them raising funds at christmas time, but they also do quite a bit of fundraising year round.