• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 9, 2008

An AT&T exec said Tuesday that the company is still toying with the idea of implementing a filtering system that would potentially prevent people from accessing or sharing copyrighted material.

"What we are already doing to address piracy hasn't been working. There's no secret there," James Cicconi, senior vice president, external and legal affairs, said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to The New York Times.

This wasn't the first time that AT&T has indicated it's mulling the prospect of censoring content. As early as June, reports surfaced saying that AT&T was prepping a filtering system.

But then, as now, serious questions remain about automatic filters. Digital fingerprinting technology can potentially identify copyrighted material, but can't tell whether the use is permissible or not. For instance, filters can't tell whether people are transmitting copyrighted clips to criticize them, or as parts of parodies. While courts typically say that using a portion of copyrighted works in a review or parody is a fair use of the material, technological filters don't have that judgment.

Coincidentally, Cicconi's remarks came at around the same time as FCC chair Kevin Martin said the agency was going to investigate complaints against Comcast for interfering with traffic to peer-to-peer sites. Last year, an investigation by The Associated Press revealed that Comcast was impeding visits to BitTorrent and other bandwidth-hungry file-sharing sites. Comcast said it was only trying to manage its network and didn't actually block any visits, even if it did slow traffic down.

Either way, Comcast interfered with traffic -- just as AT&T is now threatening to do. And either way AT&T, like Comcast, is likely to face justified pushback from consumers -- as well as legislators and regulators -- if it starts unilaterally censoring content.