Obama: 'I'm a big believer in net neutrality.'

Net neutrality was a hot topic for President Barack Obama's YouTube question-and-answer session today.

Citizens were invited to submit questions for the president on YouTube during and after his State of the Union address last week. Since then, 640,000 votes were cast for 11,000 questions, and YouTube selected a few dozen of the highest-rated questions for Obama to answer during a live interview.

Interestingly, net neutrality was the most-asked-about topic under the Jobs/Economy category.

When asked directly if he believed in a free and open Internet, Obama responded, "I'm a big believer in net neutrality."

“I campaigned on this. I continue to be a strong supporter of it," he continued. "My FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indicated that he shares the view that we’ve got to keep the Internet open, that we don’t want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn’t have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet."

"This is something we’re committed to,” he continued. “We’re getting pushback, obviously, from some of the bigger carriers who would like to be able to charge more fees and extract more money from wealthier customers. But we think that runs counter to the whole spirit of openness that has made the Internet such a powerful engine for not only economic growth, but also for the generation of ideas and creativity."

Here's a link of the specific video clip addressing net neutrality (via Free Press.)