worship the glitch

melissa:

THE AWL: Given the scale of a select few we’re potentially on the cusp of seeing that shifted over to telecom corporations. Essentially they’d have the power to silence the opposition. Is this going to be the defining moment… the Lady Chatterley’s Lover of this generation, so to speak?

Mike Edison: We talk about this all the time—the censorship you have to worry about isn’t this overt book banning sort of thing, it is more about media conglomeration and who is controlling the means of distribution—like getting Dixie-Chicked by Clear Channel. It is very easy to squash dissent on a large scale.

Richard Nash: I’m not sure the process will be as clearcut as it was with Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Everything’s more subtle and incremental now. Government really doesn’t bother with censorship—it just lets oligopolists run things, who aren’t subject to the First Amendment and are prone to focus on controversy avoidance. Neatly accomplishing censorship, without fingerprints on the weapon. I think then that it does become the defining issue, but it’s going to be muddier and more vague than clear censorship.