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FAQ: What Is Net Neutrality?

Network Neutrality — or “Net Neutrality” for short — is the principle that keeps the Internet open and free from discrimination.

What Do We Mean by Discrimination?

The huge corporations that provide your Internet connection (AT&T, Verizon and Comcast) want to make even more money by controlling websites, video, content and applications. Instead of treating all sites and services equally, they want to be able to discriminate, deciding which sites and applications load faster or slower.

AT&T, Verizon and Comcast want to make sure the public has easy access to their own sites and services while blocking access to independent sites or those owned by their competitors.

Without Net Neutrality, small businesses, nonprofits, social justice and civil rights groups, and other organizations that can’t afford high-speed services would lose their ability to reach a mass audience, restricting their participation online.

Without Net Neutrality, these corporations will:

  • control your ability to connect to your favorite websites
  • speed up some sites and slow down other sites according to who pays them the most
  • decide whose voices will be heard and whose voices will be muted

Why Should Latinos Care?

The Latino community is coming of age in the United States in the digital era. Our personal, professional and political futures depend, in no small part, on keeping the Internet as it is: open and free from discrimination. The Internet provides unprecedented opportunities for Latino individuals, organizations and businesses to publish news and information; tell our own stories; communicate with family and friends; launch businesses; and speak for ourselves.

The Internet also enables Latinos to organize online to fight for our community’s political, social and economic rights. For example, the progress made in the fight to stop SB 1070, Arizona’s dangerous and discriminatory racial profiling law, was in part due to the ability of organizations like Presente.org, National Day Laborer Organizing Network and others to use the Internet to educate and mobilize people and to promote their cause online.

Would Latinos have been able to organize six million people to march for immigrant rights in 2006 if the phone and cable companies had been able to decide who could access the Internet at higher speeds? Without the open Internet, could we have mobilized online to force CNN to fire Lou Dobbs and stop airing anti-Latino hate speech every night? Would our nation have elected its first black president? The answer is no.

We also know that if history is any guide, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast will not use their power to amplify or protect our voices. We need look no further than the still paltry number of Latinos on TV to understand that corporate media gatekeepers are often not interested in the voices of people of color.

With the free and open Internet, we no longer need their approval to speak.

Will Net Neutrality Widen the Digital Divide?

No. The phone and cable companies want us to believe that if they can earn more money by discriminating online, then they will build out broadband to communities of color and lower the cost of broadband service. They want our communities to have faith that they will do right by us. They want us to believe that if they can make more money by discriminatory business practices, then the benefits will be passed along to us.

That's wrong. The truth is that if the phone and cable companies wanted to expand broadband to our communities, they would already have done so. And telecom companies have consistently raised prices for broadband service despite making enormous profits.

We’ve heard these kinds of promises from the phone and cable companies before. But if they succeed in gaining the power to discriminate online, you can count on them to reward shareholders rather than reduce the cost of broadband for poor and middle-class families.

AT&T, Verizon and Comcast and their surrogates are trying to scare people into believing that Net Neutrality will widen the digital divide even though one of the biggest barriers to broadband adoption for many in our community is cost.

Who Supports Net Neutrality?

“I will take a back seat to no one in my commitment to Net Neutrality.”
President Barack Obama

“An open Internet is, perhaps as much as anything else, ‘the great equalizer.’ It allows people with innovative ideas to succeed on the merit of those ideas. It also provides a voice to those who often are not afforded one. Smaller businesses can compete despite not being firmly established or well financed on day one. The quality of the product or opinion stands for itself, and consumers are the ultimate arbiters of which businesses thrive at the end of the day.”
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn

“We understand firsthand the importance of making sure the community has unfettered access to the Internet. For too long, the traditional media has marginalized the Latino community and communities of color by acting as gatekeepers who prevent our voices from being heard on television or radio.”
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists

“Our amplified voice through the Internet is our new democracy, one that doesn't make the distinction between 'legal' and 'illegal.' As Latinos, we understand the harm caused to our communities when we are treated like second-class citizens. So this is why Net Neutrality is critical in preventing the Latino community from being pushed to the digital margins.”
amalia deloney, Center for Media Justice

“Rules that reinforce Internet openness and nondiscrimination will protect minority small business owners that conduct online operations and independent content producers that create three-dimensional stories to depict people of color more accurately.”
National Hispanic Media Coalition

“NALIP wants the FCC to know that we support Internet freedom. Ultimately, we believe that rules well designed to protect Net Neutrality will provide for the very open marketplace that now exists on the Internet. We look to your new rules to prevent the kind of consolidation that has allowed six media conglomerates to achieve control of traditional media outlets, to the detriment of independent production and diversity of content.”
National Association of Latino Independent Producers

“Net Neutrality would simply ensure that organizations like Voto Latino are not placed at a disadvantage when it comes to reaching our target audience of Latino youth. It would also guarantee that our supporters continue to have a platform for speech and direct engagement in national civic dialogue.”
Voto Latino

“The Internet offers a transformative opportunity to participate in a media system where we can truly control our own voice and image, and at the same time reach the largest number of people possible — all to the degree that our messages and actions resonate. The medium in its current state allows all Americans to speak for themselves without having to convince large media companies that their voices are worthy of being heard.”
ColorofChange.org

What Can You Do?

We urge you to tell President Obama, Congress and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to stand up for Latinos by protecting the Internet from corporations that want to trample on our online freedom.

Join Latinos for Internet Freedom today.