Buried deep in President Barack Obama’s American Reinvestment and Recovery Act is a line that should bring a smile to your face — and a scowl to phone and cable industry lobbyists.

It requires that billions of dollars directed to connect more Americans to broadband be spent on services that meet “nondiscrimination and network interconnection obligations.”What this really means is the good guys have won one battle in the fight for an open Internet.

According to Obama’s plan, government must now require that the $4.7 billion in federal grants for high-speed services be spent the right way: building networks that abide by Net Neutrality.

In other words, this money — your money — cannot be used by powerful companies like AT&T and Comcast to implement plans to “manage,” filter or re-route you whenever you traverse the Web.

They have been angling to do so since it became clear that people wanted to use the Internet for more than simple email, ecommerce and search.

No Blank Checks

The good news is that this stimulus money isn’t going to be a blank check to big phone and cable. It comes with strings attached, requiring that all networks built with our money leave control over the Internet in the hands of the people who use it every day — people like you and me.

AT&T and Verizon can’t use our money to invest in content filtering tools similar to the Deep Packet Inspection software now being used by China and Burma to sift through Web traffic. Comcast and Cox Cable can’t block file-sharing software or other popular and legal Web applications. None of them can use taxpayer funds to decide how and when we watch videos, from whom we purchase goods and services, and where we can or cannot go online.

The only bonus being handed out here is Net Neutrality, a benefit for the millions of Americans who rely daily upon the Internet to improve their economic status, better educate their children, connect with friends and family, and participate more fully in our democracy.

A Bid to Undercut Neutrality

But get this: Just as Washington is deciding how to spend your tax dollars on an open Internet, phone and cable company lobbyists are trying to water down the Net Neutrality requirements, and stamp out consumer choice.

They came out into the open during a public meeting Monday in Washington. “The idea that we should lay additional and unknown regulations on top of the task of the people getting this grant money is, I think, troubling at best,” said Jonathan Banks of the U.S. Telecom Association during a meeting at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

James Assey, of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said that Net Neutrality requirements could create “uncertainty” in the marketplace. Chris Guttman-McCabe, speaking on behalf of the largest wireless carriers, said openness rules take away from the central focus of the stimulus package, which is “creating the most jobs and helping reverse the recession.”

The Internet’s Bedrock Principle

Such misleading statements are designed to make people think its in everybody’s interest to hand over control of the Internet to the same companies that pay the salaries of these three lobbyists.

But what Banks, Assey and Guttman-McCabe failed to note is that Net Neutrality rules have always governed their profitable clients, such as when AT&T agreed to run a neutral network as a condition of its merger with BellSouth in 2007; or in 2008 when the FCC decided to sanction Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer protocols such as BitTorrent.

The only “uncertainty” in this marketplace would result from giving mighty network providers new powers to fiddle with our content. To do so would undercut the level playing field that has always made the Internet a great engine for free speech and commerce.

Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott just delivered 15,000 letters to the administration demanding that this basic freedom — the right to connect to anyone, anywhere — remains the bedrock principle of any new networks built with federal funds.

The voices of Internet users are clear and unequivocal on this, Scott told the agencies in charge of distributing the Internet stimulus. If you want to use our billions, we need to know that we’re getting online freedom in exchange.

When the InternetforEveryone.org town hall meeting ended on March 7, Brenda Moore and Avie Patrick were ecstatic.

They had driven nearly three hours to attend the meeting in Durham, N.C., seeking an answer to how to bring affordable, high-speed Internet to their community in Buckhead. Both Brenda and Avie are members of the Waccamaw Siouan tribe. What they found was a growing community of people across the state sharing experiences and solutions on bridging the digital divide.

“The one thing that we realized today is that we’re not the only ones in rural areas living in the sticks and all we can get is dial-up,” Brenda said. “We felt that way, we felt that we were left behind, but we realize now that we’re not the only ones.”

Brenda and Avie joined nearly 150 participants to discuss the future of the Internet as the government begins to craft a plan national broadband plan. Seated at roundtables with people who morphed from strangers to allies as the day progressed, Brenda and Avie talked about their own struggles and how the government could best tackle the digital divide.

“I consider myself a computer expert in our community, but a lot of things I heard here today I had never even touched on that could benefit us,” Avie said.

To help facilitate the discussions and catalog the themes and solutions swirling around the room, participants used individual key-pad voting technology and watched as their answers to questions appeared on large screen in real time.

Brooks Townes, who lives without high-speed Internet in Weaverville, N.C., trekked four hours one-way to make the meeting. Brooks’ story about trying to conduct a freelance writing career on dial-up was documented in our series Five Days on the Digital Dirt Road. And the video portraying his story was showcased among others during the town hall meeting.

Brooks says the trip to Durham was worth it “if for nothing but the exposure to so many bright, thoughtful, unselfish and energetic people. And the modern, facilitated ‘town hall meeting’ was fascinating.”

As participants head back to their communities inspired and engaged, the InternetforEveryone.org is heading next to Washington, D.C. to meet with members of the growing coalition and determine next steps based on the public’s recommendations.

Jay Foushee has called his local phone company in rural Roxboro, N.C., numerous times to plead for high-speed Internet service.

“I keep getting, ‘Well, it’s coming, it’s coming.’ And this has been going on for about three years now,” says Jay, a fourth-generation farmer whose family runs a 1,000-acre farm.

He isn’t alone. Where the Foushees live in Person County, population 37,356, 40 percent of households lack high-speed Internet access—relegating them to balky dial-up service.

That stat mirrors what’s happening across the country: Nearly 40 percent of the United States does not have broadband service. Whether because the physical infrastructure hasn’t been built to deliver high-speed Internet or broadband is simply priced too high, the digital divide in America is glaring, and its effects are being felt from rural outposts to inner cities.

But Jay’s desperate phone calls may be over soon. In February, President Obama and Congress passed the $789 billion “American Recovery & Reinvestment Act,” which includes $7.2 billion for broadband expansion across the country—meaning communities like Roxboro could finally be brought into the high-speed digital age.

Now that the ink is drying on the economic stimulus package, the difficult work of implementing this unprecedented broadband investment begins.

This is an historic opportunity to upgrade our infrastructure––no small task. And the three federal agencies tasked with the job—the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) – are asking for public input through a series of public meetings.

Free Press, the nonprofit organization which employs me, has a few simple recommendations that can help the government navigate broadband expansion with transparency, accountability and an eye toward protecting the public interest.

But first, a little background: The overarching goal of the new stimulus bill is to breathe new life into our flailing economy. The president and Congress are recognizing that funding broadband expansion has the potential to help revitalize local communities, and our national economy. A 2007 study by the Brookings Institution and MIT estimated that a one-digit increase in U.S. per-capita broadband penetration—the number of people who have high-speed Internet—creates an additional 300,000 jobs. If our broadband penetration were as high as a country like Denmark’s, we could expect approximately 3.7 million additional U.S. jobs.

The three federal agencies now must use the stimulus package signed by Congress to issue detailed rules, protocols and procedures on how to spend the billions. Internet service providers across the country, from large companies to local start-ups, will be appealing for grants, and these agencies will make the value judgments about what projects deserve funding. President Obama has given a Sept. 30, 2010, deadline for distributing the funds.

With the clock ticking and corporate hands outstretched, it is imperative these agencies act quickly. But urgency without accountability will result in waste, fraud and abuse, and we can’t afford any missteps.

The public interest should guide these agencies as they work to put the angels in the details, by:

• Protecting the open Internet: The NTIA and FCC should only dole out grants to recipients who adhere to Net Neutrality – the principle that stops Internet service providers from discriminating against online content.

• Promoting speed: Although the United States is the birthplace of the Internet, we’ve fallen woefully behind other countries in terms of broadband speed. The NTIA should establish speed guidelines and require grant applicants to detail how fast their networks actually will be.

• Providing clarity: The definitions of “unserved” and “underserved” areas could be tricky. The NTIA and FCC should adopt definitions of these areas that are based on U.S. Census Bureau geographic boundaries (either census blocks, block groups or tracts) and are informed by newly collected FCC broadband data.

• Preventing waste: The NTIA should require grant applicants to provide extensive documentation showing how their proposed project qualifies as a new investment that would not have been made without taxpayer support.

• Gathering information: The FCC’s past methods of mapping who has broadband have been lacking, and the agency has finally begun to change its ways. The FCC should continue on its path toward accuracy, as its data will inform the national broadband strategy.

• Ensuring transparency: The NTIA and RUS should create a single, publicly accessible online database that hosts all the information relevant to the broadband projects funded by the Stimulus Act.

The NTIA is holding public meetings this week and next week–-four in Washington, one in Flagstaff, Ariz, and one in Las Vegas. This poses an opportunity for the public to have a voice in helping to shape our broadband future and ensuring the government approaches broadband expansion with both urgency and care.

Can’t make it to a meeting? You can file your comment directly to the NTIA online—that is, if you have Internet access. And you can sign a petition urging the NTIA to only spend money on projects that abide by Net Neutrality principles.

Federal recognition that broadband investment is a vital public infrastructure marks a well-earned victory for those fighting to bridge the digital divide. Now let’s make sure that bridge holds weight.

This article was first published by InTheseTimes.com

Every now and then comes something that is a perfect expression of what the Internet is about.

The latest, if you haven’t already heard, comes via Kutiman, an Israeli Web impresario who mashed and mixed video clips of amateur YouTube musicians to create a near-flawless overture to the Twittering masses.

ThruYOU, his resulting record (if you can call it that), has taken the Web by storm, garnering more than a million YouTube views in the seven days since its release.

That’s impressive when you consider its humble beginnings. Kutiman sent an e-mail about the project to just 20 friends. They told their friends about it and ThruYOU took on a life of its own, spreading like a netroots brushfire via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and blogs.

But the ThruYOU sensation is more than a momentary blip on social media’s radar.

After seeing ThruYOU yesterday, Larry Lessig, the author of “Remix,” the bible of the free-culture generation, wrote: “Watch this, and you’ll understand everything and more than what I try to explain in my book.”

Jon Newton of P2P.net added that ThruYOU is “absolutely, 100% guaranteed to inspire artists around the world to produce art which has never been seen before, and never could have been seen without the Internet.”

All Bets Are Off

Kutiman, who also goes by the name Ophir Kutiel, has captured the Zeitgeist of the moment — a time when our rapidly evolving Internet culture is toppling old regimes and handing over control of popular information to people like you, me, Kutiman and his YouTube orchestra.

What ThruYOU tells us is that all bets are off. The DNA of our media system has mutated so completely that it’s only a matter of time before our society changes as well.

In fact, that change is already happening.

In politics, economics, arts and culture, an era of privileged access is giving way to something that’s much more decentralized, participatory and personal.

We no longer passively consume media, we actively participate in it. This often means creating content, in whatever form and from whatever sources — what author Jonathan Zittrain calls “generativity.”

We no longer limit our political involvement to television ads and the polling booth. This means organizing via Facebook; “Googling” candidates to learn more, joining text-messaging lists and creating Twitter hash tags to stay ahead of our issues.

No More ‘Mass Media’

This development cuts across our social landscape and enhances core democratic values, empowering more (although not all) members of society. Like the many singers and musicians that make ThruYOU a work of tremendous grace, it prioritizes alternative voices over mainstream pap.

It’s Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s end-to-end principle in action. Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web with the understanding that the freedom to connect to anyone, anywhere was the Internet’s First Amendment.

This openness, known to many as Net Neutrality, leaves ultimate control over your online experience with you, the user.

Taming the Dinosaurs

Users of the Internet may take Net Neutrality for granted. But this could change if the dinosaurs of old media (namely, phone, cable, recording and film companies) are successful in taming new media that threaten their twentieth-century fiefdoms.

They’ve talked about filtering content for perceived violations of copyright and have been caught blocking access to popular Web applications that put control over video more firmly in users’ hands. They have deployed their lobbyists, lawyers and PR flacks to paint Net Neutrality as cumbersome regulation that will destroy their plans to enhance your Web experience — as if they knew what that was.

Congress will have the opportunity this year to stop old media’s latest plans to remake our Internet in their image. Net Neutrality has the support of several key members, the White House and the incoming FCC leadership; it’s only a matter of time before legislation makes it to the floor.

These are hopeful signs for Kutiman and the next genius who seizes upon the Internet to take us all to a new level.

This week, Free Press published Five Days on the Digital Dirt Road, a documentary series that profiled families and individuals struggling without high-speed Internet access in rural North Carolina. We heard it straight from them: Broadband is simply not available. Yet the Federal Communications Commission says these people live in areas with several broadband providers. What’s going on?

It’s been clear for some time that the FCC’s method of mapping broadband coverage – who in America has it, and who doesn’t – is woefully inadequate. The FCC uses a ZIP Code methodology for mapping broadband, designating an area as broadband covered if a single address in the ZIP Code has service.

Because of the obvious shortcomings of this method, it is difficult to get an accurate picture of the current state of broadband deployment in the United States. But now we have these self-reported experiences to compare with the FCC’s own data that overstates the level of broadband deployment. And it looks like “overstating” is an understatement.

Let’s compare:

Jay Foushee and his family are stuck on dial-up in rural Roxboro: “I have called our local phone companies numerous times asking, ‘When can we get [high-speed Internet]?’ I keep getting, ‘Well, it’s coming, it’s coming.’ And this has been going on for about three years now.”

The FCC says there are eight providers in Jay’s area.

Layten Davis says only dial-up is available in Spring Creek: “We can’t turn the switch on to get the [broadband] turned on.”

The FCC says there are six providers in Layten’s Zip code.

Sam Adams had to erect his own wireless tower to get high-speed Internet in Rutherfordton: “Moving out here was digital culture shock in a way,” Sam says. “I assumed wrongly that I would at least be able to get cable out to the house, or DSL. As it turned out, neither of those are even close to where we live, and even our regular phone line, when it rains out here and the ground gets good and wet, our phones crackle and sometimes go out.”

The FCC says there are five providers in Rutherfordton.

Martha Abraham had to subscribe to expensive and unreliable satellite service in Mars Hill because broadband isn’t an option: “On some days, [satellite] is not any better than dial-up, and you don’t know when it’s going to be working and when it’s not. Rainstorms, it’s down. Snow, it’s down. Wind, it’s down.’”

    The FCC says there are six providers in Martha’s area.

The FCC has finally acknowledged its poor reporting skills, and will start collecting more reliable broadband data in two weeks using a new method. They’ve ditched the discredited ZIP code system in favor of actually counting the number of subscribers in each Census tract, broken down by technology and speed tier.  This new approach will help solve the problem of overstating the level of competition where service is available, but still doesn’t address the problem of identifying the granular locations where broadband has yet to be deployed (the FCC has promised to deal with the availability issue very soon).

But the new subscribership data should be far more informative than the old ZIP Code data. Let’s hope it is, because judging by these real world examples, the commission has much to change.

As anticipated, Julius Genachowski has been tapped by President Barack Obama to head the Federal Communications Commission.

The move is another indication that the incoming leadership in Washington will move decisively to protect the free-flowing Internet from those seeking to become gatekeepers to new media.

It also fulfills Obama’s promise made on the campaign trail to appoint an FCC chair who shares his support for Net Neutrality.

Genachowski

If confirmed by Senate, Genachowski would replace Kevin Martin, who left the agency the day Obama came into office. He brings two decades of experience from both the industry and policy side, having served as a top executive in IT and venture capital firms and as former FCC Chair Reed Hundt’s chief legal counsel.

Genachowski also anchored the drafting of Obama’s comprehensive media policy agenda that promotes fast and neutral Internet connections and more competitive choices for the consumer.

“It is clear that he understands the importance of open networks and a regulatory environment that promotes innovation and competition to a robust democracy and a healthy economy,” said SavetheInternet.com member Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge.

Net Neutrality Momentum

With Genachowski’s nomination, the pieces are falling into place for strong Net Neutrality protections under the new administration.

Written into the DNA of President Obama’s economic stimulus is the requirement that those who build Internet networks (using the nearly $4.7 billion in NTIA grants provided by the legislation) adhere to the nondiscrimination and openness principles at the core of Net Neutrality.

Obama himself pledged to “take a back seat to no one” in his commitment to Net Neutrality. And the administration’s technology policies now posted on the White House Web site list Net Neutrality as the top priority.

Also, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) announced last month that he will lead the influential Senate Commerce subcommittee on communications and technology.

Kerry is a longtime supporter of Net Neutrality who wrote to SavetheInternet.com activists that “Net Neutrality and internet build-out are crucial to building a more modern and fair Information Society.”

New v. Old, Open v. Closed

Genachowski will play a central role during a unique time in media history.

Open Internet supporters on the Hill, in the White House and at the FCC are facing off against industry interests who often wield their influence over communications policy to lock down new media innovation and protect their media fiefdoms.

Through a combination of forces — including remarkable developments in technology, surging user innovation, industry consolidation and policy mistakes — old and new media have arrived at a volatile moment.

It’s a conflict that pits new ideas about grassroots and decentralized communications against old ideologies about top-down information control.

The decisions made in the next few years by Genachowski, Obama and their Washington allies will determine the outcome.

His appointment should give open Internet supporters confidence that we’re on the right track.

This week, InternetforEveryone.org released Five Days on the Digital Dirt Road, a unique, multimedia report on the digital divide in rural America.

Earlier this month, I traveled across rural North Carolina to meet people trying to raise families, go to school, start and expand businesses, and participate in the global economy using antiquated dial-up service and unreliable satellite Internet connections. Their stories are a testament to why high-speed Internet is vital for America’s future, and why our leaders in Washington should be approaching broadband expansion with the same urgency and commitment given to past projects like highway construction, rural electrification and clean drinking water.

Five Days on the Digital Dirt Road will be showcased at the InternetforEveryone.org town hall meeting on the future of the Internet in Durham, N.C., on March 7.

Currently, 14.3 million rural homes across the country — 61 percent — are not connected to high-speed Internet. In North Carolina alone, nearly 5 million residents don’t have access to high-speed Internet. In many cases, telephone and cable companies have refused to provide service to people living in the remote and rural areas of the state, while some people are simply priced out of buying expensive broadband service.

It’s becoming increasingly clear, however, that Internet connectivity is key to a sound economy and could help revitalize local communities hit hard by the economic downturn. North Carolina is the second-largest textile employer and the third-largest apparel employer in the United States, and the state has suffered numerous plant closures over the last decade. The state has continued to hemorrhage jobs in the face of our current economic downturn, losing 34,900 jobs in December 2008 alone. Over the past year, 120,200 jobs have vanished, and the state’s unemployment rate is high at 8.7 percent.

Replacing these lost jobs with opportunities offered by the Internet – home-based businesses, telecommuting, online education and bringing current businesses into the digital age – could help save America’s economy, and stabilize the lives of people floundering in places like North Carolina.

Spend five days traveling the “digital dirt road” in North Carolina with Americans stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide. Start by reading “Day One.”