Latinos Need Net Neutrality

A good piece on net neutrality ran on The Root this week; although the piece revolved around the importance of net neutrality for the African-American community, similar reasons exist for why this is important for Latinos, too. And so you say, why is this a particularly important issue for Latinos? About half of Latinos use their cell phones to access the Internet. Think about that. If these companies get their way, they will — literally — control who half of all Latinos can talk to, when, how long you have to wait and whether your connection goes through both on your phone and the Internet.

A definition of net neutrality from the story:  dictates that the companies who manage the flow of content on the Internet deliver every piece of content with the same speed and priority, regardless of who puts it on the Net. Secondly, the airwaves these companies use to make their money already belong to the public! That means you and I, not fat cats, own the airwaves, making it even more criminal that private companies are trying to restrict our access to them.

Case in point:  Because of net neutrality, NewsTaco can compete with CNN.com and The New York Times’ website because the Internet is the same speed for all of us. Without net neutrality big companies like AT&T, Google, Verizon and Comcast would be able to control speed and delivery to increase their own profits. As The Root points out, they want to create “a tiered Internet where only those with the deepest pockets can guarantee that their voices are easily heard. Those who can pay more (think big companies) will have their Web content sped up, while those who can’t (think scrappy activists and bloggers) will have their content slowed down, if it arrives at all.”

¿Te imaginas? Very 1984-ish. So pass it on! Go net neutrality!

[Photo By paltelegraph]

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