How big are the stakes in the so-called network neutrality debate now raging before Congress and federal regulators?

Consider this: One side in the debate actually went to the trouble of hiring people off the street to pack a Federal Communications Commission meeting yesterday—and effectively keep some of its opponents out of the room.

Broadband giant Comcast—the subject of the F.C.C. hearing on network neutrality at the Harvard Law School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts—acknowledged that it did exactly that.

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said that the company paid some people to arrive early and hold places in the queue for local Comcast employees who wanted to attend the hearing.

Some of those placeholders, however, did more than wait in line: They filled many of the seats at the meeting, according to eyewitnesses. As a result, scores of Comcast critics and other members of the public were denied entry because the room filled up well before the beginning of the hearing.

Khoury said that the company didn't intend to block anyone from attending the hearing. "Comcast informed our local employees about the hearing and invited them to attend," she said. "Some employees did attend, along with many members of the general public."

That was not enough to satisfy Comcast's critics.

Craig Aaron, a spokesman for Free Press, one of the groups that filed the complaint against Comcast, denounced the company's tactics.

"The sad thing about this is that literally hundreds of people who were not paid to stand in line, or paid by their employer to attend, were prevented from even entering the building," Aaron said.

Such tactics are not unheard of at congressional hearings in Washington, D.C., but Comcast's critics said that they were inappropriate for a public hearing on a college campus.

Free Press campaign director Timothy Karr said that he showed up at the hearing 90 minutes early, only to find the room "75 percent full."

"The only reason these people were in the room, it seemed to me, was to keep seats warm and exclude others," Karr said.

Some audience members appeared to sleep through the proceedings, according to photos taken during the hearing. Other applauded enthusiastically when Comcast executive vice president David L. Cohen delivered key points in his presentation.

A number of people in the audience wore yellow highlighter marking pens on their shirts or jackets; Karr said that was to identify them to Comcast employees coordinating the company's appearance at the event. Khoury acknowledged that Comcast coordinated the employees that it brought to the hearing.

The revelation that Comcast paid nonemployees to stand in line at the hearing comes against the backdrop of a bitter public relations war between Comcast and its critics, including the public interest groups Free Press and Public Knowledge.

"For the past week, Free Press has engaged in a much more extensive campaign to lobby people to attend the hearing on its behalf," Khoury said.

The hearing was held to address complaints leveled by Free Press, Public Knowledge, the web-video company Vuze, and others, that Comcast is trying to stifle competition by blocking the delivery of rival video-on-demand services over its cable system.

For weeks, Free Press had been trying to organize supporters to attend the hearing by issuing press releases and circulating flyers advertising the event.

Unlike Comcast, Free Press did not pay anyone to stand in line, Aaron said, nor did it provide transportation to any of its supporters.