A few questions certainly need addressing here: First, why would the opinions of advocacy groups matter in a large corporate merger? And second, do these advocacy groups have any credibility when the merger involves a company that has provided them with financial support?

In terms of the first question, Politico suggests that AT&T wants the groups involved because the merger approval process is inherently political:

AT&T is working hard to win approval of the deal from the FCC and the Department of Justice. It’s not supposed to be a political process, but with Democrats — inherently skeptical of big corporate mergers — in control of both agencies, the company isn’t taking any chances.

The issue of the credibility of these advocacy groups is more complicated.

GLAAD officials argue that they have already demonstrated their independence from AT&T by standing up to the telecom giant on net neutrality and decrying AT&T’s decision to advertise on a Spanish language show many consider highly homophobic. (AT&T subsequently ended that advertising deal.)  Jarrett Barrios, GLAAD’s president, noted that a number of other LGBT  advocacy groups have also spoken out for the merger and asserted:

For GLAAD, it’s about the results of the merger — an increase in phone functionality and speed. With better phone functionality, more people will be able to engage in social media and online LGBT advocacy…

…The proposed AT&T / T-Mobile merger has significant impact for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. AT&T is a union business with a good record on LGBT issues. In contrast, call center workers at T-Mobile have been fighting to form a union, but T-Mobile has been aggressively trying to stop them.

Similarly, the NAACP sees its support of the AT&T deal as consistent with its previous engagements with the telecommunications industry.

Speaking to Salon on Friday, Hilary Shelton, the director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau, said that his organization has a history of weighing in on the telecom business. He noted that the AT&T acquisition was not the first merger to gain NAACP support: The group also advocated for the Comcast-NBC merger (after both corporations made a diversity pledge) and wrote to the FCC supporting the Sirius-XM satellite radio merger.

NAACP endorsements of corporate mergers, he said, are predicated on a number of factors relating to diversity (how people of color are treated in the boardroom; hiring; wages; partnership with local communities; and more). Every year, the NAACP produces a “report card” evaluating how certain companies fare in their treatment of racial minorities. One of the five industries evaluated is telecommunications.

“T-Mobile has never done quite as well as AT&T,” said Shelton. “They failed on the industry report card last cycle. Whereas AT&T is consistently among the top two.” He added that while AT&T is unionized, T-Mobile is not (which is why unions such as the massive AFL-CIO say they too have endorsed the acquisition).

There is a strong argument to be made that the NAACP’s work on behalf of black employment has merged into an all-too-cozy relationship with its corporate supporters. Indeed, as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald tweeted earlier today, “What’s the point of an advocacy group if their positions can be purchased?”

But such an argument could set up a difficult Catch-22 for the advocacy groups: Should the NAACP, or GLAAD, or the numerous other organizations involved here, be precluded from weighing in on specific industry issues involving a company that actively uses funds to promote racial or gender equality, or workers’ rights, through these advocacy groups?

Nonetheless, there is clearly a risk: Once money is involved, it’s hard to know when there’s an actual conflict of interest, and when there’s only the appearance of one.

The Alliance mobilized its fan base to win a $250,000 grant from Chase Community Giving, beating out more than 10,000 other charities in a Facebook competition. It has donated more than 55,000 books to school libraries around the world, including the Mississippi Delta and Rwanda, and is helping to build a school library in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Five planeloads of supplies were sent to Haiti after last year’s earthquake. It has registered first-time voters and even petitioned Time Warner to make Harry Potter chocolates Fair Trade: that is, chocolate not made — or cocoa beans harvested — under inhumane conditions, such as starvation wages or child slavery.

All of these efforts have been endorsed by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling herself, who once upon a time worked in the London offices of Amnesty International; she told Time magazine, “It’s incredible, it’s humbling and it’s uplifting to see people going out there and doing that in the name of your character … What did my books preach against throughout? Bigotry, violence, struggles for power, no matter what … So they really couldn’t have chosen a better cause.”

The Harry Potter Alliance was represented on the Media Reform panel by its creator and co-founder Andrew Slack (it was moderated by my colleague Elana Levin, communications director of the Writers Guild, East). Others discussed how online communities have affected off-line change through petitions, contests, fundraising drives, even video games that entertain while informing players on matters of public policy. Sounds deadly but it doesn’t have to be, as demonstrated by the human rights media organization Breakthrough’s new Facebook game, “America 2049,” in which participants become agents for a fictional Council on American Heritage, hunting down alleged terrorists.

Erik Martin, of the wildly popular social-voting news website Reddit, told the now infamous and hilarious story of how a Greenpeace campaign to name a humpback whale in the South Pacific was hijacked by an IP address in Arizona that found its way around the contest’s rule of one vote per person and began generating thousands of tallies for the name “Mr. Splashy Pants.”

Horrified, Greenpeace at first tried to remove the extra votes, hoping the winner would be something more politically correct and delicate, like “Aiko,” the Japanese word for “Love” or “Shanti,” Sanskrit for “Peace.” But when Reddit and other websites embraced the rogue candidate, the environmental organization gave in. “Mr. Splashy Pants” won with more than 78 percent of the vote and all the publicity generated unexpectedly gave Greenpeace sufficient leverage to help convince the Japanese Fisheries Agency to suspend — temporarily, at least — that nation’s slaughter of humpbacks.

None of these efforts would have been possible without a thriving networked culture and a free and open Internet. But it’s not for nothing that while the National Conference on Media Reform was just getting underway in Boston, the Republican House of Representatives, in the midst of all the government shutdown melodrama, voted 240-179 (six Democrats voted with the GOP) to nullify the FCC’s Net neutrality rules protecting access to the Internet. As USA Today columnist Rhonda Abrams wrote on Friday, “It was a pure ‘David versus Goliath’ bill, and the House voted to protect Goliath.”

Granted, the FCC rules as currently written are nowhere near as protective of the public’s right to free speech and Internet access as they should be. In many ways they’re a second-rate compromise, especially in their exemptions for mobile broadband carriers, but as Abrams notes, at least for now they require Internet companies — the telecom and cable companies — to treat all Internet traffic the same. “Of course, they can charge more for greater usage, but they can’t prioritize some customers, creating fast lanes and slow lanes,” she writes. “Because the Internet was — and currently still is — an open and equal playing field, scrappy startups like Google, Facebook, Twitter and tens of thousands more — could flourish …

“Without net neutrality, telecommunication and cable companies can tilt the playing field. And it won’t be in small businesses and start-ups favor.” Or yours as a private citizen, especially when companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are pouring millions and millions into lobbying and campaign contributions.

The House bill probably won’t get past the Senate, and President Obama has said he would veto it, but all of us have to mobilize and stay on our toes if we’re to continue to have the Internet as a potent pop culture force for social change. Otherwise it’s going to be a lot harder to save the whales — including Mr. Splashy Pants.

Would that Harry Potter could thrust his wand and holler “Petrificus Totalus,” immobilizing those who would see the Internet taken over by corporate greed and censorship. This time, the magic is going to have to come from us.

“The FCC power grab would allow it to regulate any interstate communication service on barely more than a whim and without any additional input from Congress,” said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., sponsor of the legislation. The Internet, he added, “is open and innovative thanks to the government’s hands-off approach.”

But in what has become a largely partisan battle, the Democrat-controlled Senate is not expected to go along with the House. Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said he was “disappointed that House leadership wants to undo the integrity of the FCC’s process and unravel their good work.”

Even if it cleared Congress, the White House has threatened to veto a bill it said puts in doubt whether “the democratic spirit of the Internet will remain intact.”

Rep. Henry Waxman of California, top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said nullifying the FCC rules would “give big phone and cable companies control over what websites Americans can visit, what applications they can run and what devices they can use.”

The vote to pass the bill, mainly along party lines, was 240-179.

The FCC rules were adopted on a 3-2 vote last December after years of debate over the federal role in ensuring a free and open Internet. The FCC’s three Democrats voted in support and its two Republicans opposed.

While generally seen as a compromise between technology companies fearing provider limitations on their access to the Internet and the big phone and cable companies insisting they need flexibility to manage Internet traffic, the rules drew a quick legal challenge from Verizon Communications Inc., which said the FCC had overstepped its authority.

A year ago a federal appeals court also ruled that the FCC exceeded its authority in sanctioning Comcast Corp. for discriminating against online file-sharing traffic Comcast said was clogging its network.

The rules prohibit phone and cable companies from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services, including online calling services such as Skype and Web video services such as Netflix that could compete with their core operations. They require broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal online content.

They do give providers flexibility to manage data on their systems to deal with network congestion and unwanted traffic as long as they publicly disclose those practices. They do not specifically ban “paid prioritization,” where a provider might charge more for faster transmission of data, but they outlaw “unreasonable network discrimination.”

Wireless carriers are also barred from blocking access to any websites or competing services, but they are given more leeway to manage data traffic because wireless systems have less network bandwidth.

Even supporters acknowledged that the rules are mainly about preserving the status quo of a system that is generally working well.

But absent the rules, said Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., “there would be a major shift in power on the Internet to the broadband providers from the content providers.”

He said there was legitimate fear among nonprofit and religious groups that they would be consigned to a lower tier because they could not pay a higher price for premium service. “So your Web page from Nike might load faster than your Web page from the Catholic Church because, if there was tiered access, who would be more likely to pay for the speed of the access?”

He also cited the actions of autocratic states such as China in blocking Internet content in saying the government must make clear that providers cannot discriminate against customers because of political or philosophical differences.

——(equals)

The bill is H.J.Res. 37

Online:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov

The rules are intended to prevent phone and cable companies from using their control over broadband connections to dictate where their subscribers go and what they do online. They prohibit broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services, including online calling services like Skype and Web video services like Netflix that could compete with their core phone and cable operations.

Wednesday’s vote marks the second attempt by House Republicans to reverse the FCC’s actions. Last month, they attached an amendment to a sweeping spending bill that would prohibit the agency from using government money to implement its new regulations.

Republicans argue that the rules will discourage phone and cable companies from investing in costly network upgrades by barring them from offering premium services over their lines or prioritizing traffic from business partners in order to earn a return on those investments. They also maintain that the FCC overstepped its authority in adopting the rules.

Verizon Communications Inc. and Metro PCS Communications Inc. are also challenging the rules in federal appeals court in the District of Columbia.

Last year, that same court ruled that the FCC had exceeded its legal authority in rebuking cable giant Comcast Corp. for blocking its subscribers from accessing an Internet file-sharing service used to trade online video and other big files. Comcast maintained that traffic from the service was clogging its network.

The agency said Comcast had violated broad net neutrality principles first established by the commission in 2005. Those principles served as a foundation for the formal rules adopted by the FCC late last year.

The FCC’s three Democrats voted to adopt the rules over the opposition of the agency’s two Republicans just before Christmas. Republicans in Congress, who now control the House, have vowed to try to block the rules from taking effect. They argue that they amount to unnecessary regulation that will discourage phone and cable companies from investing in their networks.

Several key House Republicans, including House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan, welcomed Verizon’s actions Thursday as “a check on an FCC that is acting beyond the authority granted to it by Congress.” The court challenge had been widely expected.

In a statement, Verizon said that while it is “committed to preserving an open Internet,” it remains “deeply concerned by the FCC’s assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself.”

The company is taking the case to the same federal court that ruled last year that the FCC had exceeded its legal authority in sanctioning cable giant Comcast Corp. The agency had cited Comcast for discriminating against online file-sharing traffic on its network — violating broad net neutrality principles first established by the agency in 2005. Those principles served as a foundation for the formal rules adopted by the commission last month.

Last year’s court ruling forced the FCC to look for a new framework for regulating broadband to ensure the commission would be on solid legal ground in adopting net neutrality and other rules. The agency currently treats broadband as a lightly regulated “information service,” as opposed to phone service, which is more heavily regulated as a so-called “common carrier.”

At one point, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed redefining broadband as a telecommunications service subject to common carrier obligations to treat all traffic equally. But he later backed down in the face of fierce opposition from the phone and cable companies, as well as many Congressional Republicans.

And he now argues that the agency has ample authority to mandate net neutrality under the existing regulatory framework for broadband — an assumption that will be tested in the Verizon challenge.

A senior FCC official said Thursday that the agency is confident that its new net neutrality rules are legally sound and is prepared to defend them.

The rules represented an attempt to craft a compromise on an issue that has divided the telecommunications and technology industries. On one side, Internet companies such as Skype, as well as public interest groups, argue that strong rules are needed to prevent broadband providers from becoming online gatekeepers that can dictate where people go and what they do online.

But the big phone and cable companies insist that they need flexibility to manage Internet traffic to keep their networks running smoothly and preventing bandwidth-hogging applications from slowing down their systems. They also maintain that they should be able to charge extra for special services over their broadband lines and earn a healthy return on the billions of dollars they have spent on network upgrades.

New York-based Verizon is the country’s fourth-largest fixed-line Internet service provider, with 8.3 million subscribers. It’s investing more in home broadband than any other company, since it’s upgrading about two-thirds of its local-phone network with optical fiber for ultra-fast Internet access.

The regulations adopted last month try to find a middle ground. The rules require broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal online content, applications and services over their wired networks. But they give providers flexibility to manage data on their systems to deal with network congestion and unwanted traffic, including spam, as long as they publicly disclose how they manage the network.

The new rules do prohibit unreasonable network discrimination — a category that would likely include “paid prioritization,” which favors the broadband providers’ own traffic or the traffic of business partners that can pay extra — but they do not explicitly bar the practice.

The regulations also prohibit wireless carriers from blocking access to any websites or competing services such as Internet calling applications on mobile devices, and they require carriers to disclose their network management practices, too. But they give wireless companies more flexibility to manage data traffic because wireless systems have less network bandwidth and can become overwhelmed with traffic more easily than wired lines.