SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A conservative group that has fueled strong opposition to several of President Barack Obama’s key initiatives is striving to needle the administration further over Internet regulation, and is achieving some success.

The Arlington, Va.-based Americans For Prosperity has worked to stir opposition to a new Federal Communications Commission order that solidifies what are called network-neutrality principles for much of the Internet, casting the policy as a “Washington takeover.”

David and Charles Koch. Koch Industries

On Wednesday, a House subcommittee voted to move a resolution forward that would reverse the FCC’s Net-neutrality order, adopted in December. The resolution may now make its way through Congress, and is subject to presidential veto.

According to network-neutrality principles, telecom and cable operators are unable to selectively limit access or charge different prices for Internet content. For example, a company like Netflix Inc. NFLX, +1.50% that streams movies online can generally operate without fear of an Internet service provider charging a premium price for that content — even if the provider is a cable firm like Comcast Corp. CMCSA, -0.08% , which offers a competing service.

The FCC’s order essentially formalizes that framework, and AFP sees it as a dangerous restriction of private enterprise.

Companies such as Comcast, Verizon Communications Inc. VZ, +0.18% and AT&T Inc. T, +0.30% generally have opposed forced adherence to Net neutrality, while Internet names such as Netflix and Google Inc. GOOG, +0.65% have favored it — though years of bumping heads over the issue has resulted in some nuanced positions.

AFP’s position is not nuanced, however.

Phil Kerpen, vice president for policy at AFP, said the FCC’s Net-neutrality order is a clear example of “the White House’s abuse of regulatory power.” Kerpen acknowledged that the resolution to overturn the order may ultimately run aground in Congress or be killed by a veto. Still, “I don’t ever think it’s safe to assume that 100%,” he said.

Depending on what else is included in a bill with the resolution, such as budget items, Obama “may not be in a position to veto that,” Kerpen added.

‘Kabuki theater’

AFP is associated with the Koch brothers — advocates for conservative causes who operate closely held chemicals, forest products and ranching concern Koch Industries Inc.

In 1984 Charles and David Koch co-founded what’s now called the Americans For Prosperity Foundation, which later spawned Americans For Prosperity, to “engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets.”

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AFP is one of a number of groups pressing for the reversal of the FCC’s Net-neutrality order. It’s a member of the Internet Freedom Coalition, where Kerpen serves as chairman, alongside other organizations such as the National Taxpayers Union and American Conservative Union.

But AFP has distinguished itself with its rhetoric.

Kerpen has railed against the FCC’s Net-neutrality regulation efforts in a series of writings and broadcasts. In a December podcast hosted on the AFP website, he argues that the FCC’s order could “end up with the total destruction of the free-market Internet,” by stripping control from service providers and handing it to the government.

If Congress moves the resolution to overturn the FCC’s order forward, “we can overturn these regulations and send a clear signal to the Obama administration that they cannot achieve all of their far-left objectives,” Kerpen says in the podcast.

In an advertisement unveiled last year that targeted the FCC’s Net-neutrality efforts, AFP warned that “Washington wants to spend billions to take over the Internet.”

That caught the attention of Media Matters for America, a nonprofit identified with progressive causes that monitors U.S. media. Media Matters said in a statement that AFP’s ad distorts the regulatory efforts, adding that “the FCC isn’t trying to take over the Internet.”

But AFP’s arguments are being echoed on Capitol Hill. In recent remarks to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, House Speaker John Boehner warned that “the FCC is creeping further into the free market by trying to regulate the Internet.”

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“Our new majority in the House is committed to using every tool at our disposal to fight a government takeover,” the Republican leader added.

Joel Kelsey, political adviser at Free Press, a group that generally supports the FCC’s bid to enforce Net neutrality, called efforts to scotch the regulator’s order “very much an overreach.”

“I think there is certainly a bit of Kabuki theater happening now,” Kelsey said of AFP’s moves to rally opposition to the order. “They’ve had an effect of polarizing this debate much more than it ever was in the past.”

‘Draconian regulation’

The Koch brothers have drawn media scrutiny for their wide-ranging support of conservative causes, and have sought to counter what they see as negative attention.

The two took issue with a recent lengthy profile in the New Yorker magazine, while inflammatory comments made by a caller pretending to be David Koch in a recorded phone conversation with Wisconsin’s Republican governor have been widely circulated.

“Because of our activism, we’ve been vilified by various groups,” Charles Koch wrote in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal last week. “Even though it affects our business, as a matter of principle our company has been outspoken in defense of economic freedom.” Read piece by Koch on WSJ.com.

The Koch brothers have had an impact on the Net-neutrality issue independent of AFP. One of the strongest opponents of Net-neutrality regulation in Congress, and a cosponsor of the resolution to overturn the FCC order, has been Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. — who counts Koch Industries as a major supporter, according to data published by the Center for Responsive Politics.

According to the data, AT&T ranks second, Verizon is third and Koch Industries ranks ninth among Blackburn’s top contributors.

The Kochs note on the Koch Industries website that AFP is only “among the hundreds of organizations” that their company supports. The group has made a particularly strong push on the FCC’s Net-neutrality order, Kerpen said, because it sees it as “draconian regulation that’s been rejected by the American people.”

But Free Press’s Kelsey counters that AFP is opposing an order that could prevent the restriction of free speech online: “It allows groups like Americans For Prosperity to not have their speech filtered,” he said.

Kerpen called the notion of telecom and cable operators picking and choosing which content to allow over their networks a “scare story.”

“It never will happen, because of competition,” he said, adding that a service provider filtering content would “lose all their customers.”

The Open Internet Coalition, which generally has supported the FCC’s Net-neutrality efforts, includes Netflix, Google, Facebook Inc., eBay Inc. EBAY, -0.64% and others. The group issued a statement in December praising the FCC’s order, but also suggesting that it should be extended to cover wireless Internet services, as well as fixed wireline services.

Open Internet Coalition spokesman Eric London declined to comment for this story. The coalition recently has turned its attention to a legal challenge to the FCC’s order, filed by Verizon.

Verizon sued the regulator in the U.S. Court of Appeals in January, arguing that its Net-neutrality order is “in excess of the commission’s statutory authority.”