"These conglomerates, if they have their way, would be able to exercise their financial power to crowd out family-oriented, religious, and conservative entertainment and information that has flourished on the Internet as a result of its toll-free nature. ... Small, Christian online radio stations will lose the ability to provide their services as tolls become prohibitively expensive, and for these Mom and Pop operations, any added costs could close them down. Churches could lose the ability to webcast services to their congregations and beyond."

The notion that ISPs would "excercise their financial power" to eliminate the competitive threat of religious and family-themed online broadcasting is not explained here. And why would a company want to alienate reliable customers? Sure, Viacom and Yahoo have deep pockets, but even these companies are considerably outspent by the aggregate of smaller Internet firms. There is a huge market in the small stuff. 

But the way Mr. Backlin describes "tolls" is mistaken as well. There would be no tolls for regular Internet service as we currently use it. The only tolls would be for an advanced type of service, known in the industry as QoS. ISPs want to be able to sell guaranteed packet delivery to paying customers, no different from UPS offering faster parcel delivery for an increased fee. Where we go from this situation to the doomsday scenario of the little guy being forced off Internet, is never explained.

Mr. Backlin doesn't mention the Dorgan-Snowe bill by name, but this is a bill under consideration now which would use the regulatory power of the government to forbid ISPs from offering this service. I suggest he check out the blog of the group I work for: http://handsoff.org -- we do include ISPs in our coalition, but not ISPs alone. We support an open and unregulated Internet. And rather than give lip service to the free market, I hope the Christian Coalition give their position another thought, rather than simply follow left-wing groups such as MoveOn and FreePress in this mistaken cause.