See Slate: Obama vs. McCain on media policy 2008
Being pro-net neutrality means that Obama and his advisers believe basic anti-discrimination rules (a modern version of the "common carriage" rules that make phone companies and innkeepers serve all comers) will preserve the open nature of the Internet—and keep it safe for unapproved speech and surprising innovations like Wikipedia and YouTube.
Camp McCain starts from a different ideological place: one that takes the Internet as, essentially, a very cool "product." As a product, the Net is less a public resource, and more something provided by the private sector in whatever form it considers best. In this sense, Camp McCain sees the Internet as more like cable television on steroids than some imaginary commons of the ether. What channels should be on cable is mostly a question for Time-Warner and Comcast—so why shouldn't Internet providers make the same kinds of decisions?
That's the view McCain pushed in 2005, when he co-sponsored a bill that allowed Internet blocking "on notice." If McCain's bill had become law, a cable or phone company could in theory block, say, the video site Hulu.com by providing notice in the "service plan." Interestingly, in that bill at least, McCain put himself at odds with more moderate Republicans, like Kevin Martin, present chairman of the FCC, who recently punished Comcast for just such consumer blocking. McCain (though he wavers in interviews) has put himself firmly in the anti-net-neutrality camp. According to his Web site, McCain might forbid some blocking, but in general, "John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like 'net-neutrality.' "
