CARLSBAD, CA — A rumor sweeping the press corps here at the D6 conference: TechCrunch's Michael Arrington was set to stream Bill Gates's presentation live, but organizer Kara Swisher, who wanted to keep video restricted to her AllThingsD.com website, put the kibosh on it. Arrington abandoned the effort, but cited "bandwidth issues," not Swisher's strongarming, as the reason. Update: In the comments, Swisher denies she personally asked Arrington to stop streaming and says it's "the first she's heard of this." But, as commenter Mr. E. notes, Arrington associate Loic Le Meur confirms via Twitter that a man who "wasn't nice" asked Arrington to stop recording. In a subsequent email, Swisher says Arrington should have known better:

We do have a no video policy inside the ballroom as we don't have video rights to all stuff we show, so we have to do that. but we say it explicitly in the program and in notes to reporters and bloggers, so they should know. It's easier to gin up a controversy.