There are three possible mechanisms of control which can be used to silence progressive voices: economics, community standards, and ownership. All three of these are a part of net neutrality.
The choice by the FCC to probe Comcast is critical, important and worth of praise. The following describes how net neutrality can be sold, and the triple threat faced by community and people-powered media. Net Neutrality is a central long term issue for Daily Kos.
First, the breaking news:
FCC OPENS NET NEUTRALITY PROBE OF COMCAST
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
Comcast Corp., the nation's leading provider of residential high-speed Internet access, has received official word that it is being investigated by the Federal Communications Commission in connection with its network management practices, two sources said Monday. .... "consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement."
The FCC's Enforcement Bureau, according to sources, sent Comcast a letter on Jan. 11 that spelled out in general terms the agency's interest in knowing whether Comcast is managing its network in a manner consistent with the agency's August 2005 "policy statement" with four consumer-centric "principles" to ensure that "that broadband networks are widely deployed, open, affordable, and accessible to all consumers." The FCC probe follows Associated Press articles positioning Comcast as blocking peer-to-peer file sharing Internet transmissions by BitTorrent users. The articles triggered complaints at the FCC that Comcast violated the agency's principles, one of which states that "consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement."
http://www.multichannel.com/...
What did Comcast do? Currently they are blocking or slowing all p2p traffic.
The FCC has a public comment period. Certainly lawyers, intellectual property owners, media owners, et. al. will weigh in. You need to do so as well:
http://www.pcmag.com/...
Officially this is strictly about Comcast blocking all BitTorrent traffic. But at the same time Comcast is seeking to push locally owned content right of the proverbial dial.
DETROIT -- Comcast cannot move community access channels higher up the dial -- and out of the reach of thousands of Michigan cable subscribers with analog televisions -- under a temporary order issued by a Macomb County judge.
http://www.mlive.com/...
No doubt this is just a test, to see if they can get away with this across the nation. These pesky local channels bring almost no income to the infrastructure giants. And of course are critical to many locales.
********WHY THIS MATTERS*******
For economics, imagine the blogsphere if every blog had to pay every infrastructure provider to reach "their" customers. Only the big players could afford to play. Given the reality of politics, I could imagine a special provision for religious institutions. And guess how they line up.
The MSM has money. We know how the economics of media are aligned with the control of the bandwidth in ratio. Now religious "community" stations are pushing progressive radio right off the dial: http://www.alternet.org/...
The NYTimes could pay to get Judith Miller and her enable Kurtz into our homes. The Daily Howler, http://www.dailyhowler.com/... Media Matters http://mediamatters.org/ and FAIR http://www.fair.org/ could not afford it.
Imagine the blogsphere if the network service providers could filter anything "offensive". It tends to be the case that those things that are offensive are progressive. Hating gay people? Vote suppression? misogyny? Nope none of that is too offensive. Descriptions of domestic violence, the graphic reality that is rape, and the brutal reality of hate crimes are offensive.
A good description of how sexual hysteria was used to strangle the progressive movements of the time can be found in Imperled Innocents.
(http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5899.html)
Moral reform movements claiming to protect children began to emerge in the United States over a century ago, most notably when Anthony Comstock and his supporters crusaded to restrict the circulation of contraception, information on the sexual rights of women, and "obscene" art and literature. Much of their rhetoric influences debates on issues surrounding children and sexuality today.
Control of the network then - Anthony Comstock was postmaster general -- was at least as powerful as the network now.
The third mechanism for control is ownership - copyright. If you cannot send videos or images unless you can prove you own them, you cannot send video and images. The Domain Name governance fight http://www.icannwatch.org/ illustrates how trademark holders have been able to squash commentary, by claiming successfully in court that the business owners of businesses in Historic Williamsburg http://www.finnegan.com/...
had an interest in the domains "colonial-williamsburg.com" and "colonialwilliamsburg.com" while the filthy hippie who were union and non-union employees working in the business have no such property rights.
Net Neutrality is not as engaging a fight as the HRC v Obama V Edwards fight. But it is at least as important. (I assume any one of the three would defeat any R.)