Who knew that the names of nearly obsolete file-sharing services were considered dirty words by the bigwigs at MTV? Well, "Weird Al" Yankovic does now, thanks to the version of his Bill Plympton-penned video for "Don't Download This Song" that's on MTV's new video-only site MTVMusic.com having the words "Morpheus," "Grokster," "Limewire," and "KaZaA" dropped out of its lyrics. The bigger insult? MTV's online standards and practices department didn't even go the "dropping the vocal track when the offending words hit" route that has turned so many other pop songs into stutterfests—they actually stick in answering-machine-quality BEEPs, so you know something's being blocked from sensitive ears. I think this might be the first time that's ever happened to the stringently PG-rated Yankovic. Yay, Internet? [TechDirt via Artists Paid]

"Radio 1 are playing an edited version of the Fairytale of New York that does not include the world 'faggot' as this is a word that members of our audience would find offensive," the BBC said in a statement...

But MacColl's mother Jean, speaking on the BBC Radio 5 Live, called the ban "too ridiculous".

"These are a couple of characters," she said, referring to the characters in the song.

"Today we have a lot of a gratuitous vulgarity and ... whatever from people all over which I think is quite unnecessary. These are characters and they speak like that."

As to Radio 1's defense, a rep makes the all-important distinction that the offending slur is being "faded down" rather than bleeped. God, does this mean we need to add a "fadewatch" category now?

BBC Radio Station Censors Pogues Christmas Hit [Retuers]

1, I ORIGINALLY WANTED TO SHOOT THE VIDEO IN A FACTORY ON THE BORDER OF EQUADOR, BUT COULDNT. I WAS TOURING THE U.S, I COULDA BEEN ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD RIGHT THEN BUT THERE I WAS IN AMERICA, IN NYC, IN BROOKLYN, IN BEDSTUY , I WAS TORN BETWEEN SCRAPIN SHOWS IN AMERICA AND MEETING AMERICAN FANS OR SHOOTING IN NYC ON MY ONLY DAY OFF I'D HAD IN 4 MONTHS AND GETTING ON WITH IT.

2, SO THAT WAS THAT! I NEVER MADE A VIDEO IN AMERICA AND HEY ITS STILL A PART OF WHAT I DO AND SAY, ITS WAS STILL VALID, SO I WAS READY TO ROLL WITH IT.

3, YOU ALL KNOW HOW THE SONG SOUNDS, THATS WHY WHEN U GO ON YOUTUBE 400, 000 PEOPLE WOULD RATHER LISTEN THE SONG AS IT IS AND STARE AT SOME PICTURE THEN TO ACTUALLY WATCH A VIDEO

4, WHEN LETTERMAN CENSORD ME IT WAS WAC OF COURSE!!!!!! , AND YES I FELT SOOOOOO BAD FOR WHAT THEY DID TO MY SOUND. I WAS ABEL TO SOUND CHECK FOR THAT SHOW AND THEY LET ME SOUND CHECK FINE, THEN ON THE ACTUAL TAPING MY SOUND WAS SOOO DIFFERENT FROM WHAT ID AGREED, AS SOON AS I OPENED MY MOUTH THE DIFFERENCE BLEW ME AWAY, I FELT I WAS GETTING BULLIED ON NATIONAL TELEVISON, AND I COULDNT EVEN REACH OUT TO MY LABELS OR MY MANAGEMENT TO HELP, SINCE THEY ARE NEW TO WHAT HAPPENS TO AN ARTIST LIKE ME IN MAINSTEAM AMERICAN CULTURE.

SO THEY TRIED TO SHUT ME DOWN AGAIN. I MADE THE PAPER PLANES VIDEO. I MADE IT HOW THEY WANTED. NO VIOLENCE. AMBIGUOUS. MTV - FRIENDLY. NOW TODAY, I CHECK YOUTUBE AND SEE THE LEAKED MTV PAPER PLANES VIDEO UP FOR THE FIRST TIME. I CLICKED ON IT AND OUT COMES THIS FUCKED UP MESS WITH DOUBLE-TRACKED BULLSHIT MESS

WHO THE THE FUCK IS DOING THIS TO ME?????

THE VIDEO WAS SABOTAGED FOR WHATEVER REASON AND IM DISAPPOINTED THAT MTV HAS HAD SUCH A MAJOR ROLE IN THIS. THE BLOGGERS WHO ARE LAZY ENOUGH TO FOLLOW THE MTV LINK AND POST UP AND COMMENT ON THE SOUND WHEN THAT HASNT BEEN COMPROMISED AND THE GUNSHOT ARENT REPLACED AND EDITED MAKES ME SAD. I DID FIGHT FOR THE SOUND , BECAUSE PUTTING MEANINGS IN YOUR VIDEOS, IN MY OPINION IS A DYING ART. I CAN FILM MY SELF ANYWHERE ANYTIME AND LET YOU KNOW THE TRUTH , BUT THE SONG IS WHAT I WANTED TO PRESERVE IN THIS CASE.

TO ALL MY FANS, LOOK, ITS LIKE THIS,
IM LEARNING THINGS ABOUT THIS WORLD WITH YOU, I WANT YOU TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO ME , I WANT YOU TO SEE HOW PEOPLE WILL SIT AND SPEND ALL SUNDAY TEARIN ME DOWN FOR SOMETHING I DIDNT EVEN MAKE OR PUT OUT, SO PEOPLE WELCOME TO MODERN DAY PROPAGANDA MESSAGE MANGLING.

IN 2007, AN OUTSIDER OPINION WILL BE CONFRONTED THIS WAY , AND THIS IS HOW THE BATTLE GOES, MY MESSAGES AND IDEAS AND MEANING WILL ALWAYS BE BROUGHT TO YOU WITH SLIGHTLY TAINTED CHANNELS. IF YOU SUPPORT ME BE SMART, AND KNOW THAT.

Now, I love "Paper Planes"—and the thrust of the song definitely does lose something with the gunshots taken out of it, as evidenced by a remix that I heard a few months back. But it's kind of hard to believe that "Planes" really went through the process of becoming a single (or an "emphasis track" or whatever the few remaining people employed by majors call them these days) without M.I.A. being at least dimly aware of MTV's heavy hand with the "cough" button. (Hello? They bleeped the word "shirt"!) I don't mean to be dismissive here, but this just seems like either a) there was a communication breakdown somewhere between M.I.A. and Interscope and MTV, and the idea of it even being a big deal is odder to me because of MTV's reticence to play videos at all (didn't they think that using her songs in promos for The Hills would better serve to "break" her anyway?) or b) this is all a well-orchestrated publicity stunt to let people know that hey, "Paper Planes" is on YouTube—which is probably where most of M.I.A.'s target demo gets the majority of its music-video content these days anyway—and by the way M.I.A. is still fighting the man! It's probably bad that option "b" was my first thought, isn't it?

PAPER PLANES official video [YouTube]
PAPER PLANES VIDEO [M.I.A.'s MySpace blog]

This item on the forthcoming album by the Breeders (it'll be produced by Steve Albini, but alas, it'll be Josephine Wiggs-free) reminded me: Did you know that Fuse is now bleeping the word "bong" out of reairings of "Cannonball," a bit of snipping that I don't think was even practiced by MTV's always-running-scared standards and practices department back in the day? And here I thought the Cablevision-owned music-video channel was so proud of its "edgier" stance when it came to scary words about sex and drugs and killing people. (I swear there was even one time when I saw the video for "Teenagers" on the channel and the audio on the words "murder" and "bleed" got pumped up through no volume-manipulation of my own.)

The Breeders reveal all about new album [NME]

An eagle-eared MTV viewer writes in to inform us: "From the people that brought you 'Me and Warren G about to make some bodies turn [bleep]': New Maroon 5 video for "Wake Up Call" on MTV2 has the phrase 'I had to shoot him dead' FOUR TIMES unbleeped. And a gun! in the video!" We wonder if the MTV2 version is this "Director's Cut," where Mr. Levine blows a man away—Just to watch him die? No, because he was schtupping his lyin' video girlfriend—and then bags up the body and then tosses the body off a bridge. (We lost track of the number of bethonged behinds and boobs jiggling in slo-mo.) Plus the F-word! Even if MTV did censor Levine's more murderous impulses, 50 Cent must be pissed.

Maroon 5 - Wake Up Call DIRECTORS CUT [YouTube]

I don't think they have a problem with the group the Killers being called the Killers ... I don't think anyone's protesting that Guns N' Roses is called Guns N' Roses. I just think that their perception of me is dark, so they're going to ask for those things to be changed, you know what I mean?

Well, the last time Guns N' Roses put out an album, the standards and practices department at MTV was a lot more, uh, lenient, so their name is probably grandfathered in. But if I were him, I'd save my complaints for when MTV starts cutting arbitrary nouns from his songs, instead of words that they're obviously running scared from. Or maybe he should just change all his references to "killing" to "being drunk," since the higher-ups over there have no problem with that sort of thing.

Second Memoir Heralds Fitty, Littérateur [NYM]

A spokesperson for AT&T passed along a statement from the company that said, in part, "It's not our intent to edit political comments in webcasts on attblueroom.com. Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases." But the setup that the Sun-Times points out does intimate that the blueroom does edit for content, despite there being no disclaimer on the site that said screening takes place:

A suburban Chicago company provided a live video feed from the park to AT&T, and a freelance company in Los Angeles broadcast that stream on the Web several seconds later, after the footage was reviewed by a "content monitor" who could "bleep" or edit the footage because of objectionable content, much as network television does with shows like the Grammys.

"Ordinarily, they would not be at all interfering with the performance of a song — with lyrics or anything along those lines," said Tiffany O'Brien Nels, AT&T's Austin, Texas-based spokeswoman. "A good example of what they're there for would be an artist engaged in typical stage banter where the profanity gets excessive. The reason we have that person in place is the Blue Room [Web site] is not age-restricted."

Surely it would be nice for AT&T to be up-front about its content-screening policies, instead of having to let viewers know about them only after a particularly embarrassing screw-up. And given that AT&T is the only company that's streaming these huge outdoor festivals—and it's trying to trade on the cool factor of the "edgy" artists on their bills—the option to hear the unrated version of the shows would at least allow the adults in the audience to, you know, be treated like adults instead of condescended to "for the children."

But what's even more shady about this whole thing is the nature of the content-screening. Just who is this L.A.-based company—the absence of its name from the Sun-Times piece seemed a bit jarring—and what is its guidelines for profanity being "excessive"? We've already seen how MTV's bleeping policies border on the incoherent, and I'd think that the "I know it when I see it" definition of obscenity for fans of artists like Pearl Jam or, shoot, even Tom Petty (whose performance of "You Don't Know How It Feels" had its "let's roll another joint" line allegedly bleeped by blueroomers) would be a lot different than those outlined in a training manual for people who are probably making about $15 an hour. So will AT&T come out with its guidelines for content screening? Or are users just supposed to guess at lyrics the way they have to with TRL broadcasts of Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls"?

Corporate sponsor or corporate censor? [Chicago Sun-Times]

Today's TRL had at No. 7 My Chemical Romance's "Teenagers," a track that we've sung the praises of in the past. But as is the case with much of the music that sees actual airtime on MTV, the song was pockmarked with bleeps. While some of the x-ed-out words were to be expected, tallying up which words were and weren't blocked by MTV's standards and practices department led to some odd results:

BLEEPED:
• murder
• shit
• "your shirt"
• pay

NOT BLEEPED:
• bleed
• violent

Now, it's understandable—sort of!—why "your shirt" and "pay" were bleeped; the verse in question is about whipping out a concealed weapon as revenge for high school kids' cruelty. But if you're going to get rid of those words and not also ding words that actually conjure up violent imagery, what's the point? As Dan pointed out over IM, MTV's bleeping of "shirt" may actually be a sop to the less-literate, more-reactionary audience members who watch TRL on mute:

GuestDan: sounds like shit
GuestDan: you can never be too sure
GuestDan: could be a close captioning nightmare

Which leaves us with only one conclusion: Watch out, "this." You're next.

My Chemical Romance Teenagers Lyrics [metrolyrics.com]