The National Journal's Ron Fournier argues that the loss of net neutrality could be the spark that ignites a populist tech revolt:
Where is the outrage? I asked that question of a half-dozen technology experts, including Obama administration veterans who witnessed the derailment of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, a 2012 copyright protection bill that technology activists feared would undermine internet access an innovation. Two years after an online insurgency overwhelmed the gilded institutions of Washington, the grassroots are relatively quiet.

"The internet providers lost the battle and won the war," said a former Obama administration official who refused to be identified while criticizing the administration. "They've got their hooks into most members of Congress and both major parties." Said another: "Godspeed to the American consumer. We could be screwed and not know until it's too late."

If net neutrality dies and the internet "rails" suddenly become more expensive and less reliable via monopolies, the protests will be loud. Cheap, easy access to information, entertainment and e-commerce are as engrained in modern American life as the telegraph and trains had become in early 20th century. Take that away, and the elites will pay.

That brings me back to the Gilded Age, when innovative entrepreneurs morphed into monopolists who corrupted Washington and exploited workers. They were corralled by the era's "new media," so-called muckrakers like Upton Sinclair, S.S. McClure and Ida Tarbell. It was Tarbell who wrote a series of magazine articles on Rockefeller and Standard Oil that put an ugly human face on the trusts, galvanizing the nation behind Roosevelt's fledgling populism.

DailyCandy was once a hip newsletter that kept subscribers in touch with the latest, coolest entertainment, food and fashion trends. And then owner Comcast ran it into the ground, founder Dany Levy tells The Wrap. "From my perspective, I watched them destroy a brand."

Levy believes Comcast botched DailyCandy's once popular format by copying other companies’ revenue strategies, like Groupon, which turned off a lot of users and, in essence, turned DailyCandy into a spam email subscription.

“It became a desperate clamoring to find something that was going to make money, and you were getting potentially eight emails a day,” she said. “To be frank with you, I unsubscribed, I couldn't watch it. It was like watching a train wreck.”

Apple and Comcast are in preliminary talks to partner on a streaming TV service that would reserve a congestion-free portion of the cable operator’s broadband service to ensure smooth video delivery, the Wall Street Journal reported late Sunday.

Details are scarce considering the early nature of the negotiations. But if talks come to fruition, such a venture would mark a breakthrough for Apple, which has futilely attempted many times to get in on the TV business but failed to come to terms on any of the variety of tie-ups that have been discussed.