Recently in the state capitol, some lawmakers have been flirting with the latest fad idea about regulating the Internet — the so-called “net neutrality” rules. The corporate giants pushing the proposal — Internet companies like Google and eBay — say that the rules are needed to prevent broadband providers like the telephone and cable companies from blocking access to or discriminating against certain Web sites.

Certainly, a “free” and “open” Internet is a concept that everyone supports, making the idea of net neutrality initially appealing. But, upon closer examination, most lawmakers have grown cold to the proposed net neutrality regulations.

Why? The most glaring problem is that the proposed regulations seek to cure a problem on the Internet that doesn’t exist. Worse, the regulations could reverse the competitive downward pressure on broadband prices that has enabled Latinos and communities of color to connect to the Internet and even kill the next generation of online applications that are so critical to online innovation.

For years, Google and others have warned that broadband companies like AT&T, even in an ever-competitive marketplace for broadband customers, would find ways to cloister the Internet and block consumer access to sites and services that the company somehow does not like.

This Internet apocalypse has not come to pass. And it’s unlikely that it ever will given the increased competition in the marketplace for broadband consumers. Indeed, there has not been one single complaint that any major telephone or cable company has actually prevented consumers from accessing their favorite sites and content. Meanwhile the market value of companies like Google has soared far past that of the Internet service providers.

When pressed, the advocates of “net neutrality” regulations say regulations are necessary because broadband providers might one day discriminate against some such Web sites and applications they don’t like.

But the notion that we should start imposing regulations to cure speculative problems is a dubious one, particularly when there likely are many adverse and unintended consequences.

The Internet today faces two principle challenges: expanding broadband capacity and closing the digital divide. Net neutrality regulations could undermine our capacity to address both.

Broadband capacity is going to have to expand by a factor of five-fold in order to meet consumer demand for bandwidth-intensive applications like the latest video services.

Ironically, net neutrality regulations would give the large Internet companies that run these applications new legal tools to shield themselves from having to pay for the expansion of broadband capacity. Instead, consumers would have to pay the entire cost of increasing broadband infrastructure. A free and open Internet shouldn’t mean the big guys get to pass off the bill to everyone else.

And if the costs of a new network capacity are shifted onto consumers as they inevitably would, the digital divide is likely to explode. Today, only 29% of Latino adults subscribe to broadband at home, compared to 43% of white America. That statistical difference represents thousands of potential Hispanic leaders and entrepreneurs that are being left behind when it comes to acquiring the online skills necessary to succeed in tomorrow’s world.

Luckily, as the price of broadband has fallen over the last decade, the digital divide has narrowed and more communities of color have been able to connect from their homes. However, if net neutrality laws protect every new online video Web site from paying the freight for delivering high-quality Internet movies, investors will simply not fund network upgrades. Broadband prices, as a result, will stop going down and will likely rise in the wake. Since Latinos, African Americans, and middle-income Americans are price-sensitive when it comes to broadband, anything that shifts broadband network costs to consumers will actually widen the digital divide.

Finally, the overregulation of Internet commerce could stifle rather than facilitate entrepreneurialism. New York’s power grids can, with some significant investments, be turned into another robust broadband transmission pipe, instantly reaching millions with existing infrastructure. But if a video content company like NetFlix wanted to partner with a utility company to generate those investments, net neutrality rules could give any other video provider the right to veto the partnership under the theory that the partnership could disfavor their own video content. That kind of vertical relationship could be enormously beneficial to the competitive marketplace, but could be illegal under a net neutrality regime.

An open Internet is good and we should oppose any effort by broadband providers to balkanize it. But the necessities of competition have proven the best antidote for bad behavior by broadband companies, and the net neutrality campaign may be a case where the cure is far worse than the poison.

Mr. de Posada is the president of the Latino Coalition, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C., established to address policy issues that directly affect the well-being of Hispanics in America.