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Days ahead of the President’s statement calling for Internet protection, demonstrators protested in front of the White House in support of net neutrality. (Photo: Joseph Gruber/cc/flickr)

Responding to the call of millions of Americans and years of grassroots campaigning, President Obama on Monday took what net neutrality proponents called a “major step” towards the protection of the Internet by issuing a statement calling for the safeguarding of “one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known.”

Obama’s new policy framework calls for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reclassify the Internet as a utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which would make it subject to public control and regulation, like water and electricity, thus preventing corporate Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, from using their monopoly control to dominate the web.

“The president who promised to take a back seat to no one on net neutrality has finally gotten in the driver’s seat,” said Craig Aaron, President and CEO of media watchdog Free Press, in a statement following the White House announcement. “And he may have saved the Internet at the moment it was in the greatest jeopardy.”

In the White House statement, Obama wrote: “We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas.”

“For almost a century, our law has recognized that companies who connect you to the world have special obligations not to exploit the monopoly they enjoy over access in and out of your home or business,” the president continued. He emphasized that to extend such protection to the Internet would only be “common sense.”