If you are streaming this online you are receiving it without paying extra nor are you trying to get around an outright block of it's liberal content. That's because you are using the ObamaNet. A bit of history: the Right Wing crazies made fun of Al Gore for 'inventing the Internet', a claim he never made by the way. Gore did push through the language that made the government funded construction of the internet entirely available to anyone without prejudice, or as it's commonly known, Net Neutrality, and the right wing corporations hated him for it.
Bush appointees to the FCC found a loophole in the law and simply declared that that Net Neutrality ended when it reached your ISP or Internet Service Provider. That could be a phone company or increasingly a monopoly cable company that provides the last mile of wire between you and the World Wide Web (www). So if you want to stream a movie you don't just pay for high-speed internet, you pay extra to the original source because they will be artificially restricted from providing you with content at a usable speed without paying extra, even though you are already paying for high speed access.
Robbing you at the toll booth is the Conservative Economic Model, any number of tollways, toll bridges, utilities... Enron, all models for taking your money for no reason other than they can. The difference here is that they can simply refuse to stream content that they don't approve of. It's like turning back cars at the toll booth because they don't like the liberal bumper stickers on your car. Actually Bush did eject people from his Town Meetings on that basis alone.
Once Harry Reid nuked the Right Wing hold on Presidential Nominees, Obama appointees confirmed by the Senate to the FCC have reversed this regulation. It had originally led to a Supreme Court ruling in favor of corporate censorship. Simply put, Obama appointees have decided that the last mile of internet cable serves the "Public Good" and is not just a corporate profit center nor an excuse for censorship of content.
The Right Wing response is that Obama's FCC ruling allows the Federal Government to micromanage the internet. They are good at that kind of lie aren't they? It's just the opposite of that of course, any corporation or individual can continue stream content to Al Gore's World Wide Web regardless of content, political leaning or what ever standard you care to apply.
Twitter @BruceEnberg - The Founders would have seen the Internet not as magic as you might assume but as the result of the science and learning that they almost all endorsed. They would be pleased that the First Amendment was applied as they wrote it to cover this Free Expression of Ideas.
