Comcast Rides Again

Of course I'm hypocritical keeping my Comcast account, they're the best bundle out there right now, OK? But the company annoys and outrages me again and again with its pesky political influence-peddling and censorship. If you're unfamiliar with the smarmy history of this legion of scumbags, check out some of Bruce Wagner's tales of censorship, the complaints of poor voice quality and poor customer service, and the company's packing of FCC hearings on net neutrality with paid lackeys.

The latest atrocity involves the censoring of a New Mexico activist emailing people about a rally regarding Israel's occupation of Gaza. Bob Anderson of Stop the War Machine was sending out rally notices Jan. 9 and found his outgoing mail service had been shut off. Bob tells us that "Comcast security says they sent a message about the shut down. But it never arrived here. I don't know when they might have sent it either. This means they must have sent it earlier than the shutdown ... Comcast said I had been reported to them as a spammer and was using Port 25 on their server which is a violation of some type. I should have been on Port 517, they said. I know nothing of what this means except the Comcast rep implied I had been improperly using a business port or some other port and not a residential port. This seemed hostile and a red herring answer. I asked from whom it was that they had a report to shut me down and they said that was proprietary information and they would not tell me ...

"I think a person should have the right to know who is doing this to their private email. I pay Comcast for the email service, they treat it like it is a privilege to email with them. Comcast is one of the telecom companies who have agreed to work secretly with Homeland Security in their interruption and surveillance of terrorists. The question is, does protected political dissent in this country constitute a terrorist activity? I am not a spammer, just a normal politically concerned American citizen concerned that my government is aiding and abetting a genocidal foreign policy in Palestine."

Bob's case is all too common. One thing that concerns me is that an active federal probe under a new administration would find plenty of wrongdoing by both the Bush administration and telecom service providers working with the FISA bypass. Judging by the front page of the Jan. 12 New York Times, Obama is not too thrilled to look into past wrongdoing.

Record Labels: Shut Up. You Are Passive Distributors.

Lou Reed was belaboring the obvious in his South by Southwest keynote speech, when he told the audience that there was no reason for any budding musician to sign with a major label. Not only does Internet distribution cancel any good purpose labels might serve, Reed said, but they often stand in the way of effective marketing or visibility.

Case in point, Nashville teen-punk band Be Your Own Pet. The band lamented that Universal forced them to take three songs off the just-released second album, Get Awkward. So big deal, they'll release the songs as an EP. Universal execs whined that they were violent or uncomfortable, and chances are I might not have liked them, but that's for the listener to decide, right?

One of the reasons labels join the despicable RIAA is that they're uncomfortable with the notion of being passive distributors of an artist's work, with no say-so in shaping the artist's direction -- or serving as censor, for that matter. But a terminal patient does not get to choose mode of survival. When broadband communications debuted a few years ago, large telephone and cable companies said they didn't like the notion of serving as commodity bit-pumps. Analysts told them they'd better be quick in moving to value-added services. Censorship or control over the bit-pipe was not an option, as Congress told Comcast recently. Content shapers like music labels and film/video production companies are in the same boat. They will end up being commodity distributors unless they figure out useful ways to help artists and consumers alike. Maybe Be Your Own Pet was naive and dumb to let Universal determine content, but Universal was about two decades too late in even attempting such a thing. As Lou Reed said, it would be better for everyone if music labels simply died. In the meantime, they'd better just shut up and get out of the way, and realize they have little practical function in life except aiding distribution of content.

VCAST Your Vote for Verizon Stupidity

A lot of people think that Verizon Communications represents the epitome of cool these days, with its FiOS fiber-to-the-home service and its VCAST program for broadcasting and song downloads to mobile phones. Verizon's ads love to remind you how ultra-chic they are, sponsoring all that is trendy in music and culture.
But oops, they've gone and pulled money from the Gwen Stefani tour! Now, I could care less about rich pop icons like Stefani and her tour opener Akon, and whether or not Verizon sponsors them. It's also inaccurate to call the yanking of the sponsorship "censorship," since Verizon, like a private citizen, can boycott whatever or whomever it wants.
However, the company may have jumped the gun. It wanted to express its distaste for Akon, who was captured in a video in Trinidad simulating a sex act with an underage preacher's daughter. But there's a lot of evidence that Akon was caught unawares by many factors here. And let's face it, Akon is a lot more respectable than two-thirds of the R&B and hip-hop acts out there these days.
Besides, why is Stefani paying for Akon's so-called sins? Guilt by association was wrong in the McCarthyist era and wrong now. The pushback Verizon is getting from customers, as cited in the May 10 New York Times article, indicates the company has lost its cool cachet. When CBS fired Don Imus, enough people were sick of him that protest was muted. When Verizon dropped Stefani and Akon, the case was tenuous enough to probably cause Verizon more damage than it anticipated.