For years, the internet has been thought of as an expansive, free and open utopia of information and entertainment. It has interconnected parts of the globe in ways previously unimaginable. Traveling across oceans, mountains, rivers and canyons to exchange goods and ideas has now been succeeded by clicking a mouse and tapping a screen.

However, the internet’s status of being free and open came into question back in January when a federal appeals court ruled against the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality policies in Verizon v. FCC. The court concluded that the FCC did not have the power to prevent internet providers from discriminating certain websites in regards to speed, price or just plain access.

Normally, it would be wise to assume that consumers could take their business elsewhere if they did not approve of their internet provider discriminating the speed or access of certain websites. But when looking at how much of a “choice” people really have in internet providers, the importance of net neutrality becomes quite clear.

Currently, there is no legislation that stops internet providers from giving certain websites slower service and charging customers to load them at the faster, expected rate. They can even block websites entirely. Ensuring that internet providers do not do this is what the term “net neutrality” entails. Unfortunately, avoiding this is not always as simple as changing providers.

According to a report from innovationfiles.com, a little over half of Americans have only one choice in broadband providers for speeds at or above 10 megabits per second. The national average is at 18.2 according to Gizmodo. Knowing this, the extent of power that internet providers possess becomes indisputable. By blocking a particular website in an area where they are the only avaliable provider, millions of consumers are unfairly denied access to free and open content.

More recently, net neutrality has been brought up in regards to the $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable by Comcast in February. If the deal is approved by the FCC, the combined group will become a dominant force in broadband and will reach around one in three American homes according to CNN Money. Not long after this, the streaming giant Netflix agreed to pay Comcast to ensure high quality streaming to its customers.

Although Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has publicly displayed adamant support of net neutrality, he posted in a blog in March that “in the near term we will in cases pay the toll to the powerful ISPs [Internet service providers] to protect our consumer experience. When we do so, we don’t pay for priority access against competitors, just for interconnection.”

If consumers are paying for 15 Mbps, then that’s what they should get with every website. It’s not fair having the dominant internet provider in an area manipulate the speeds of particular websites and making either the consumer or company pay extra. Even if internet providers do not intentionally slow down or block particular websites to begin with, some feel that companies should still have the right to pay for faster service.

The only issue is that this kind of agreement causes a conflict of interest due in part to how large internet providers have become. Allowing businesses to pay for faster service, even if internet providers don’t discriminate to begin with, still would not be true neutrality. The spread of ideas and innovations encouraged by the internet are truly something to marvel. There is absolutely no need to limit this progress by letting internet providers pick and choose who gets better service.