The GOP's beef with everything can always be boiled down to money. Duh. But, before we get into that, let's define "Net Neutrality" so we're all on the same wave length.

Ultimately, Net Neutrality equals freedom on the Internet. It means no restrictions on what you can do, view, create, etc. It means users decide what they'll shield from their children's eyes; what they are and aren't interested in; and how they will use the Web for their individual purposes. To sum up: no restrictions.

You'd think the states'-rights-lovin', free-market-myth-proselytizing, anti-regulation, anti-tax, Second Amendment Bible thumpers on the right side of the aisle would be all about freedom online. Well, you're wrong.

Why? Because cable, telephone and Internet companies don't like it. They want more control, not less, since control often leads to cash. (We're talking about control of the media, which is extremely dangerous in a Democracy.) As we all know, if there's anything GOPers love more than freedom, it's cash and corporate sponsors. Also, Obama promised Net Neutrality on the campaign trail — which, of course, means Republicans have to rally against it now since their main goal isn't governing, it's destroying our president.

Of course, Net Neutrality fans are spazzing out about the Federal Communication Commission's plan to hand off their rule-making responsibilities to Congress ... as well they should be. If the FCC continually bows down to telecom companies and the lawmakers those companies support financially, what good is it?

Right now, the Internet is free, open, and it belongs to us. Shouldn't we keep it that way?

From Wired.com:

Many advocates of net neutrality believe that the most effective way to ensure internet freedom — in the long term — is through new legislation from Congress. But with anti-regulatory Republicans taking over the House of Representatives there is virtually no chance of that happening for at least two years. So, advocates say, it’s up to Genachowski.

Republicans have been lashing out at possible FCC action for years. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the outspoken Tennessee Republican who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee pledged Tuesday to overturn the rules.

“This is a hysterical reaction by the FCC to a hypothetical problem,” said Blackburn. Genachowski “has little if any congressional support for net neutrality.”

Since her election in 2002 to represent the “Volunteer State,” Rep. Blackburn has received $114,000 in campaign payments from AT&T, Verizon, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association; her second, third, and fifth top career contributors, respectively, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Meanwhile, AT&T met with FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus six times in the last month to make its views on the matter known.

In many ways, the net neutrality argument has mirrored a broader philosophical debate — all too familiar to Americans — about the role of government in the United States.

Huge corporations and their ideological allies have advocated a vision of free market capitalism unfettered by burdensome regulation that, they argue, threatens to hamper their businesses. Public interest groups and consumer advocates have argued that regulation is needed to protect people and the market itself from abuse by the nation’s highly profitable and politically connected cable and telecom companies.

The internet is different from other industries that have become flash-points for the debate over government regulation. There is no catastrophic oil-slick befouling the coastline and devastating local economies. There is no institutionalized system of mortgage fraud or predatory lending. There is no out-of-control speculation on toxic investments that nearly bankrupted the country.

In this case, a de facto state of net neutrality exists on the internet at present.

Most people take this idea for granted every day while using online services, devices, browsers and software. To the big cable and telecom giants like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable, ignorance = money. So, they’ve compared new rules enforcing internet freedom to a “solution without a problem.”

But net neutrality rules are critically important to the health of the internet, advocates argue, because without them cable and telephone giants could block or slow down certain types of content, like bittorrent or YouTube, prevent or discriminate against against certain web services and applications like Netflix or Skype, or even censor free speech on websites they deem objectionable.

They could also try to create a private, ultrafast virtual highway designed for their own next-generation video products — think bandwidth-intensive applications like 3D-video to the home.

This cleaving of the internet could have grave and unintended consequences because it could decrease the incentive and the possibility for smart young entrepreneurs to create the next Google or Facebook or YouTube on the newly “public” internet, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt has taken to calling it.

In short, advocates argue, net neutrality is like a First Amendment for the 21st century: the broadband giants shall not infringe upon the freedom to access the open Internet.

Read the entire post, by Sam Gustin, here.

From SaveTheInternet.com:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.