Latinos and the Internet: FCC to Re-write Net Neutrality Rules

By Victor Landa,NewsTaco

The issue of net neutrality is considered by many people to be the most important First Amendment issue of our time. At it’s most basic level, net neutrality is about an open internet, with equal access to all users, versus an internet  where the corporations who own the pipes charge different rates to different providers and users, depending on the capacity of the internet pipe in use.  So if today you can access any site with any content, without net neutrality you could be made to pay higher rates for your content, depending on the type and size. This is a watered-down explanation, but it holds the basic ideas that have been argued in courts of law. It comes down to whether infringing on citizens access to the internet, through pricing, is an infringement of First Amendments rights.

For the Latino community this is vitally important. Access to the internet is key to our community’s advancement – economically, educationally, and politically.  A tiered cost system would affect low-income Latinos the most, and those are precisely the people who depend on an open internet the most.

Mega-media corporations, led by Verizon, successfully sued the FCC over their internet rules and won a hard fought victory to eliminate net neutrality rules – in essence opening the door for tiered pricing and giving the internet pipe owners absolute power over the users. The FCC decided not to appeal the lower federal court’s decision, but has instead decided to re-write the rules governing the internet: they are 2oth century rules and need to be updated for a 21st century world. Part of that re-write could entail the reclassification of the internet as a public utility. If that happens the FCC would have the authority to ban the kind of changes that the conglomerates have sought through their lawsuits.

This isn’t far removed from what the federal court judges have said: that while the FCC internet rules are not constitutional, their spirit is right. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler saw this as an invitation to re-do the rules, and the new set of standards is expected to be released this summer.

Expect a fight. The big media companies who own the internet access and want to charge more for faster service won’t take the new rules quietly; and it will involve congress and the partisan swamp that it’s become.

So, no, net neutrality is not dead. You can expect the next move in the latest First Amendment chess match to come in a few months.

[Photo by GSCSNJ]

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