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AT&T to Help MPAA Filter the Internet?
Save the Internet writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the MPAA is trying to convince major ISPs to do content filtering. Now, merely wanting it is one thing, but the more important point is that 'AT&T has agreed to start filtering content at some mysterious point in the future.' We're left to wonder about the legal implications of that, but given that AT&T already has the ability to wiretap everything for the NSA, it was only a matter of time before they found a way to profit from it, too."
Arr, where isOliver Wendell Jones and his swashbuckling Banana PC when ye need them!
Avast, all the p2p sites need to do is mask the activity by sendin' and receivin' "noise" (content of random or random packets of encoded content with pre-arranged means of embedding send and receive commands, encoded by phrases passed by other means.) Arr, I be reading too many cryptographer tales.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
sooo thats what? sniffing for bittorrent packets and sending them off to never-never land? seriously i dunno, anyone wanna give some more details into what that means. blocked websites maybe? i'd be surprised, but then again... i wouldn't be.
AT&T is the company that used to own people's phones, so one would expect them to do something like this. Fairly easy and profitable for them, even if it is morally suspect.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
the more important point is that 'AT&T has agreed to start filtering content at some mysterious point in the future.'
Just like with bottled water, unless you get the filtered kind, you might end up with some tubgirl residue floating around in there.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
No we're not. When AT&T permitted NSA to infiltrate/subvert its network in order to monitor all domestic and foreign Intarweb traffic, it broke enough privacy laws that the legal consequences would require the dissolution of the company.
Unlike Arthur Andersen and the Enron scandal, AT&T and the other US telcos are "too big to fail". Because no penalty can be assessed without bankrupting AT&T, no penalty can be assessed, period.
Now that the precedent has been set for some crimes (to date, those involving national security), there's nothing to stop it from being applied to other crimes (namely, those involving copying pictures of a cartoon mouse, or sounds emitted from a plastic-titted starlet).
As prophesized by the late, great Douglas Adams, the legal implications to AT&T are as follows:
"Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?" said Mr. Prosser.
"How much?" asked Arthur.
"None at all," replied Prosser.
Right. I'm setting sail for south Korea. Who's with me, men?
Would this mean that AT&T is now responsible for all the content that goes over their lines since they are demonstrating they have the ability to filter it?
This sounds like the first cannon fire in the legal war to no longer be required to practice net neutrality. They can use this as the justification to change what traffic goes across the internet they provide.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
ISPs burn themselves by getting into content filtering. Force them make a choice between "common carrier" status, where they aren't responsible for the traffic they carry, and being subject to suit over delivering damaging traffic, like viruses and DOS attacks.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The first time some porn gets through their filters, I'm going to sue their ass. Hey, just because I typed, "hot teen lesbian action" doesn't mean I actually want to see that stuff!
-- Will program for bandwidth
Companies such as Endace. A start up from a NZ university, they've been on the Deloitte/Unlimited 50 fastest growing companies for several years (peaking at 1000% growth).
Someone has to make the product to enable this functionality, and if this goes ahead, it will prove very lucrative.
The Mothership
I've always thought that over time, more and more services will become completely encrypted end to end.
Personally I think that is a good thing.
Neither MPAA nor ISPs should be able to see the content we are exchanging and be in the position to filter it. Even with SSL, where the server can theoretically be accessed by anyone, the computational requirements of establishing a session will choke the filters. Add some captchas and you are gold.
How many times must this myth bubble to the surface? ISPs ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS (at least in the USA).
If ISPs were common carriers, there would be no 'net neutrality' debate - it'd be a settled matter.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
This being slashdot, I figure someone out there will have an informed opinion on the technology they plan on using to perform this task. I'm particularly interested in how they plan on preventing uncooperative isp's from using this as a competative advantage.
I think I just shit my pants from that much suck in one title.
The game.
...to create an ISP that specifically goes on record indicating that they won't keep logs, can't be schills for the MAFIAA, and do no content filtering whatsoever??? Wouldn't sending a subpoena to such an ISP to get the user info of an IP address be a moot point since that ISP could legally and honestly say "we don't have that info"???
Another idea... What if that ISP just acted as a proxy that you could use with your existing DSL or cable provider? What if that "proxy ISP" was foreign? Essentially, your IP traffic gets redirected and all the MAFIAA knows is a IP address at a "proxy ISP" (that doesn't keep logs...)
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
But they don't provide the whole internet, so they're going to provide a branded experience. A shitty experience. An experience that puts them at a competative disadvantage.
I mean. What's to stop a politically submissive cash cow from cutting off the pr0n? You think prohibition was bad? That could spark the first coup in my lifetime.
It fits the pattern we've been seeing from them. Remember, this is the company that pillaged South Africa's economy, rewrote its privacy policy to give itself more leniency, lobbies against net neutrality, and fights open-access wireless.
And don't forget, they shut down the time service too. Bastards.
On the 0th day, God created C
AT&T knows this and is acting just as if those laws did not exist becuase they know that they will not be enforced against them. They aided the NSA after all. AT&T can no longer be thought of as a company in a free market. They are now effectively a governmental entity.
Who are the engineers building this crap? Does the MPAA just dragnet tech schools looking for programmers who can't find work? The people needed to build a mechanism for "filtering the internet" are the SAME PEOPLE who use services like IRC,FTP,BITTORRENT, and USENET to communicate with one another and exchange data. They are NOT going to create a tool that will shut down the closest thing they have to a bastion of technical discussion; usenet/irc. Yes yes yes, flame on, i know that usenet is flooded with morons lately, and some irc servers out there are no better than an AOHELL chatroom, but the fact of the matter is that good channels/groups DO still exist (I know from experience).
Okay so, lets pretend for a second that there are SOME semi-intelligent programmers out there who decide to create a database of god knows what that can be matched against some other database of some arbitrary value inside of a file sitting on some server somewhere...lets just PRETEND for a second that this hacked-together-in-a-month system is actually DEPLOYED on a live network. If it doesn't simply crash from shere-volume, it will be easily defeated by either a single re-encode, adding a watermark to the film, shifting the audio track an 1/100th of a milisecond, adjusting the contrast, or any one of a THOUSAND other things that can make one file look COMPLETELY differant that another one.
Point is:
THESE PEOPLE ARE RETARDED!
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Until they can figure out how to filter spam effectively and efficiently, this is just vapor. What do they plan on doing? "Oh look a .mp3 file, lets block it" type filter? That's retarded.
FTFA:
"...given the money and time that will be required to implement such a system..."
Indeed. Did you guys not learn anything from DRM? How about copy protection? Maybe the anti-virus arms race will jog your memory? Oh wait, I know how about 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0? Still nothing?
There's always going to be faster gun, and you cannot "invent" a solution around that.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Does that mean that on the day they start packet filtering my IP's I can terminate my contract without penalty because they will be in breach? (And, yes, even though it's not in writing it can be held to be a binding element of the contract - verbal agreements do carry legal weight, they're just harder to prove than written elements of the contract)
ATT you want to see what will make me pay $50 a month for my Internet from the cable company? Start filtering and I'll drop your crappy $20 DSL that day.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
Services that is, DSL reports was the best site I found last time I went looking. But that was a while ago, anyone know of a better site now?
Where are the greenies when you need them to protest?
Did it ever occur to anyone the vast processing resources content filtering will require? Processing data of any sort will require energy (not including energy to keep them cool)
Just imagine AT&T having data centers racked up with network appliances around the world. Their sole purpose; to filter content in real-time for the MPAA/RIAA.
Such a waste of resources...
Life is not for the lazy.
If I were AT&T I would log and record every piracy attempt that was thwarted and bill the MPAA for the service. Say $0.30 for each one?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's sister?
God I'm getting so fucking tired of this shit. It won't be long till the RIAA and MPAA will sue you just because you have a broadband connection. They'll simply claim that 'because you have broadband, you have the ability to pirate our works'. The record and movie industry need to shut the fuck up and quit forcing telcos to spy on us, the government does enough of that as it is. In any case, telcos need to loose their 'common carrier status' and be liable to lawsuits if they intend to do this.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I think there's a really important point here that we're missing. Now that AT&T has admitted that they have the ability to filter content, and have plans to implement it in the future, what's to stop them and other ISPs from taking it a step further and filtering out "immoral" content such as pornography, or even to head even farther down the slippery slope and enter into the political game? Net neutrality is a huge issue on more than one front.
I'm not so much worried about AT&T filtering their customers' traffic... I'm not one of them, and there are often enough other choices. The problem is that this is only true if they're not filtering all the traffic that flows through their backbone, much like the recent NSA todo. If your ISP has traffic that passes through AT&T's network (or heck, uses their infrastructure), are they therefore going to be filtered as well?
So if you read something on the net - through your filtered connection - about making explosives or picking locks, and then use that information to harm some third party, then that third party can sue you and AT+T?
Ok, am I reading this right? Encrypting day-to-day traffic is going to soon be the new norm? Seriously, in the arms race between ISP's and networks the ISP's can't win. All that will happen is the networks will be more sophisticated, use better encryption, etc, etc. ISP's should instead focus on going after the big fish instead of trying to make it impossible/cumbersome for people to transmit certain information. I hope AT&T is smart enough to realize this. . .
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Hahahahhahahhahahahha hahahahhahahhaahahhahaha hhahahhahahahhahahhahhahaha hahahahhaha hahah!
AT&T? At a competitive disadvantage? And who, pray tell, are they competing with?
The music group "Dire Straits" in their song "Money for Nothing" is right. ATT will make money doing nothing except tattle on the mostly legitimate people who use torrents and other P2P sharing information. http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/dire_straits/money_for_nothing.html Note: I didn't write the lyrics. Please contact Dire Straits direct about the lyrics.
Wireless providers, cable companies, satellite providers and really anyone who understands that the better experience wins all things being equal.
Send the sales guy and the tech guy an email, saying "just to confirm and document our prior conversation ..."
Keep a copy.
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Good luck with that, MPAA and interested ISPs... Trying to control the flow of information of the internet is so easy, that nothing at all could go wrong!
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
So lets see what will happen. People will start encrypting their connections. Then presumably AT&T will block or degrade encrypted connections ( thus causing security issues ). Now, queue stenography. TCP/Noise in images, audio and video clips. With a strong cipher encrypted data is mathematically indistinguishable from noise unless you have the key. Lets see their filters distinguish between an audio stream recorded using a noisy microphone and a stream containing an encrypted stream overlay. I'm sure their servers won't have any problem whatsoever trying to do image analysis on every single webcam simultaneously. Then you can proceed to trying to distinguish a noisy video from one with encrypted data embedded in it. Really, AT&T and pals, here is a message for you. The great firewall of China fails at censoring the net, and that one is run by the fucking government. You seriously think you can do better ( worse) than the PRC and still make a profit? Good fucking luck.
I thought that Common Carrier status means that you are an unbiased transport of content. If AT&T is going to selectively filter content based on someones whim, then wouldn't that be a violation of Common Carrier status let alone the Net Neutrality issue. But wait, AT&T is in the back pocket of the NSA so why not in the back pocket of the MPAA, RIAA, and anyone else that gets cozy with the Southern Boys Club and throws a few simoleons their way.
This can of worms, which I totally bet was opened without consulting with their engineering and programming staff first, is as ugly as it can possibly get.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What in the hell is going on. The sad thing is.. IT WILL happen and you wont be able to do a dam fucking thing because that is how America works.
I for one, welcome our regular censoring, anti american corporate overlords.
The system is broken, and the country is dead.
Guy In Cart: Lovie? What's it like to have Comcast? Lovie: Well, when downloading a song do you ever get the similar feeling of watching a Bears game when Rex throws a 30 yard pass to Mushin for a touchdown. Guy In cart: No. I have AT&T Lovie gets in his car and starts chuckling as he drives off
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
Guy In Cart: Lovie? What's it like to have Comcast?
Lovie: Well, when downloading a song do you ever get the similar feeling of watching a Bears game when Rex throws a 30 yard pass to Mushin for a touchdown.
Guy In cart: No. I have AT&T
Lovie gets in his car and starts chuckling as he drives off
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
... can we just have our 802.11 mesh networks already?
I assume you can grasp the difference between telling a government official who called whom when and summarily executing thousands of people.
seeya.
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Huh? Since when did the US become China?
"I'm sure I've mentioned this before."
I have a $100 that says that the next time we have a story like this. Someone will once again say "I though that [insert big ISP here] had "common-carrier" status?
AT&T wants to filter the network.
http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~i312co/blog/?p=185
It seems to be outside the realm of possibility to get any ISP filter outbound SMTP connections from their dynamic address space. What makes the MPAA think they can get them to pull of scanning for copyrighted content?
If i wanted filtered internet, i'd move to China. Where the hell is my freedom now? All the matters to the MPAA is money. It be time for these rapscallions to walk the plank.
Now, really; isn't this sort of language unbecoming a recording industry executive?
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
This sounds like the Great Firewall of China. Oops, It is exactly like it. Chinese government filters internet content and MPAA wants to do same thing.c
\
Seems like examining data and then deciding to pass it on or not (filtering), would void their "common carrier" status. Or has something changed?
Seems if they technically "can" filter, then that opens the door to "forcing" them to filter -- if for no other reason than to classify the traffic as legal or illegal -- if they can do that, seems like it's a no brainer to see some state telling AT&T to enforce their decency / obscenity standards.
Another area -- if someone speaks/writes/posts/ (whatever) about an illegal act they are participating in and AT&T is "agreeing" to carry their conversation (since, by doing some filtering they are demonstrating that they *can* filter and are aware of traffic content), then doesn't AT&T keeping "quiet" make them liable for "conspiracy" charges?
If not, why not? Under, zero-tolerance drug laws, for example, "smoke shops" or "grow shops" can't sell you "goods" if you tell them, you are using them for illegal purposes. If you mention illegal drugs, and they sell you the "goods" (to consume, distribute, make, etc...), they are guilty of conspiracy to do the crime. I think they altered federal sentencing to make those who are guilty of conspiracy liable for the same prison terms: 5 year minimum for many (most?) crimes.
So if AT&T is monitoring traffic to determine what to block (or not), there's a good argument that they will be "aware" that "illegal conversations" are taking place -- and if they "sell you" the service (carry the call or traffic), then seems like "someone" might be liable for that "illegal" selling of goods to carry out an illegal act.
What does anyone else think?
That's silly. "Big brother" existed, and has always existed, and used whatever technology was available at the time. Those seeking to work outside the law -- for whatever reasons, just or unjust -- have the same limitations.
In the 1930s, the government had high technology. It wasn't the same high technology as the government has in 2007, but it was sophisticated for its time: telegraphs, teletypes, keypunches and card-sorters. Similarly, people who wanted to flout the law didn't have nearly-unbreakable encryption that's available to anyone who wants it today, nor could they rely on the near-anonymity offered by our modern population and millions of miles of essentially identical, featureless suburbia and cheap personal transportation. (If you wanted anonymity in the 1930s, you were pretty much restricted to large cities; a stranger passing through a small town would have been noticed and remembered more easily than today.)
The sword of technology cuts both ways: as it gives advantages to Government, so too does it give advantages to those looking to remain undetected. Many tools can be used by either side, the question is mostly who can use them most effectively and can demonstrate the most flexibility and adaptability to changing times and circumstances.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Isn't AT&T the Exclusive iPhone Carrier in the US? I thought Apple was so DRM-firndly!!!!
There was a court case involving AOL that illustrated this very principle. "Common carriers" are generally considered to be immune from prosecution or lawsuits pertaining to the content that passes through their system, because they do not originate that content. They are merely passing it from place to place at the behest of third parties, so they cannot be held responsible for that content.
ISPs have often been able to claim the "common carrier" defense in court when users tried to sue them for things having to do with content (libel, slander, etc. by third parties).
In the AOL case, someone in a moderated chatroom made defamatory comments about someone else in the chatroom. The offended party sued both the defamer and AOL. The lawyers for AOL tried to get AOL excused from the suit, using the common carrier defense. The judge disagreed. The problem is that AOL moderates (censors) its chatrooms. The judge ruled that if AOL chose to control the content, then AOL was responsible for that content.
In a way this is kind of ironic, because their chatrooms were moderated in an attempt to keep things "family friendly". But in reality, they can't have it both ways. And that really is justice.
So, you are correct. The basic idea is: you cannot claim the "common carrier" defense if you control the content that passes through your service. Filtering (like censoring) most definitely qualifies as "control". Carriers who control their content can be sued for that content. So if they filter, they can then be prosecuted for passing along, say, illegal porn that goes through. And it would be pretty easy for someone to set up such a "passing through". So they are sticking their heads in a noose.
Which, by the way, is fine with me.
Contrary to what that other poster wrote, that is the law and it is real.
Today it's "pirate" media tomorrow, it's whatever Big Brother feels like. The people doing it won't ever really tell you what they are doing. If you thought this kind of shit could only happen in China, WAKE UP NOW! Control is ultimately what the MAFIAA are all about. You will never be free if your computer and internet have owners. The destruction of net neutrality is the natural extension of non free computing and will bring us all right back to 1936 as far as freedom of press is concerned.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
It's already happening to your email. Big brother does not want you to share stories about how you got locked away and tortured for five years without charges, so the free internet must die. You will not be allowed to run a server of anykind. When you do, ATT will drop it on the floor. ATT and friends are dependent on government protection of their racket and will be happy to treat you the way AOL, Yahoo and M$ have treated people in China. Oppressive governments can not tolerate truth.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
http://www.mysecureisp.com/
Time for the AT&Tea party!
It was not the Zeran or the Drudge case, nor the more recent case in Ohio.
I know they'd never do anything like filtering out sites or artificially placing a limit on someone's download speed...
Have comcast/rogers customers used the methods you imply? Or is the only reason their customer aren't doing this because there is still some crumbs of competition left in their area(usually in form of local DSL monopolies)?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I'm sick of the pirates and warez kiddies on here bleating about their right to steal other peoples work. the sooner companies like AT&T start censoring out the fucktards at piratebay and similar sites the better.
deal with it you arrogant communist cunts.
...and so the arms race continues.
Imagine if the content companies bought up all the ISPs, what on Earth would we do then? Maybe "bought up" is the right phrase to use.
Hey Slashpeople, why does Preview take so long to complete? I wrote this last night, flicked away cos I was bored of 'waiting for slashdot.org', got involved in something else and forgot to return til this morning. This has cost me valuable 'Insightful' points!
Like home movies Don't (edited) home movies tend to contain major label recorded music? Sony is still in both branches of the MAFIAA.
That service looked interesting, but their website is so dumbed down for "the average user" that it doesn't give any information on how it actually works. Care to enlighten me? My best guess from their marketing pitch is that it is just an ssh tunnel to their server with a toolbar for turning it on and off.
I'm just curious as to whether it is something more than that.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
Go out the window and AT&T becomes liable for any content they allow to pass. ( or has this already happened, thus why they are in talks to make this sort of move to avoid suits? )
Want to guess that means they will error on the side of restricting then being lax? Say good bye to a LOT of things online if this comes to pass.
Time to encrypt people.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
in california AT&T has public utility status (as in many counties it is the only line that comes to the door and ISP's must lease AT&T's lines)- if AT&T does file filter it is very possible to file a class action lawsuit to not only have them cease and desist- but to have all assets seized by the state until which time the court case is settled- is there already filtering? the answer is yes from someone that I talked to on the inside, but the big question is: what will happen when the hammer falls? will AT&T stop? will they be shut down?
http://www.i2p.net/
seriously. how long have we had strong cryptography??? why have we not been using it?
SSL, PGP... encrypted bandwidth is unfilterable untierable bandwidth. it solves "net neutrality" without involving the government / FCC. it solves AT&T et. al. spying for the NSA whether they like it or not.
an I2P encrypted gateway is super easy to install and get working with Azureus for fully anonymous torrenting.
I just moved to a smaller town and have had problems with my T-mobile cellphone not getting reception in certain places. "Just switch to Cingular" people tell me, and I smile and keep it to myself, knowing I'll never willingly put my communication in the hands of such a company. My parents have been using AT&T and SBC (not like the distinction matters now) for phone and internet for years. I've been trying to get them to switch to FIOS and a VoIP solution. They won't listen to me when I tell them how much of a clusterfuck this company is, but I'm sure my stepdad will once his movie torrents start getting filtered. Sure, AT&T might get better cellphone coverage in my area and maybe Verizon's customer service is a little shittier (I doubt it compared to AT&T) but at this point I'm willing to sacrifice a little quality and support of a service in order to deal with a company that won't sell and filter my information at the whim of whoever wants to pay for (MPAA) or incentivise (Baby bell merger, NSA).
My knowledge of current Internet architecture is not deep (sadly), but I know that right now AT&T and a couple others provide backbones that carry a lot of traffic. However, with the burgeoning number of 80211 nodes isn't there some possibility that the original decentralized design could elaborate to the point where your packets could route around what is essentially 'damage' to the larger network? If I can request files from a node that is three wifi hops away, what do I care if AT&T's backbone is 'damage' that prevents the transmission of video content?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
It is also too bad their main page is not ssl..... If I were toting the benefits of ssl for everything I would at least have my main page ssl.
So then here's the best (or at least a very good) contribution that tech-savvy folks could make to the future of free (as in speech) communication on teh intartubes: Create an easily installed free software suite combining some anti-malware & anti-keylogger functionality with easily configured privacy features that obfuscate traffic by default, and anonymize it on demand.
Explain to them that this can help thwart many identity theft techniques. Tell them about the explosion of organized cybercrime, and how it affects ordinary citizens. Explain how easy it is for web site operators to inspect and misuse their data, and bundle a site-specific password hashing feature. Tell them that their ISP is implementing technology to slow down their music and video downloads, but that this can fix that in many cases.
In short, don't make the all-benevolent government out to be the bad guy; that will only alienate the "I have nothing to hide" types. Fortunately, there are plenty other meanies out that Joe Six Pack will rightly be afraid of.
If this project could gain a similiar popular acceptance to, say, Firefox, then large groups of people would put up vigorous resistance to having their privacy and safety tools taken away. In short, (1) Identify real problems that Joe Sixpack *does* care about when informed of them, (2) solve those problems *and* couple the solution with the kind of privacy and anonymity tools that we want to preserve, (3) *popularize* the hell out of it by promoting it as *the* free alternative to commercial privacy products. Tell Aunt Edna she needs it to keep her bank records out of the Russian mafia's hands. Tell the pimply high-school kid he needs it to keep the RIAA from suing him. Tell the political activists they need it to keep the opposing parties from amassing a database on them. For as many demographics as possible, find their reason for using it.
It's a race. If the US gov't were to outlaw traffic encryption today, Joe Average wouldn't care (or even know) about it, most likely. The only way he'll ever know and care about it is if someone teaches him what and why. The only way he will listen to someone teaching him about it is if they make it appear useful, nay, necessary to him, and do it in simple problem:solution language he can understand.
Ready... go.
Well, right now they are competing for my internet provider dollars with Comcast. That's not to say they couldn't buy Comcast some day soon.
I hate AT&T and I swore about 6 years ago that they would never receive another dollar from me. Unfortunately they bought my cell service provider (Cingular) with whom I have a contract until August 2008. So they're getting more of my money until I'm able to leave them. When SBC bought AT&T they let the virus like management of AT&T into their fold and now SBC is going to be as infected as AT&T was with monopolistic thinking.
I have zero desire to have ANYTHING with AT&T's name on it. In fact, for me it is such a strong negative association that I'm halfway considering getting rid of my contract now and just paying the early termination fee.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.