The World Wide Web has evolved from the start by public funding, by long-term spending and research efforts from, for instance, the US defence, universities and their computer networks (in many countries major universities are wholly or partly funded by the public, not by private enterprise or by churches), state owned phone companies who have evolved into leading ISPs, state-run comp/electronics colleges and so on. Even the web addressing system and the basic network rules and standards running the www are held up by international authorities such as ICANN and CERN and guaranteed by states, not by Microsoft, Vodafone, Yahoo or Verizon. So the structure that keeps the web running and growing would very likely not have happened if it was geared only by private enterprise - I'm talking of the framework, not of individual sites such as Youtube, Google etc..

So the web really should be seen as a public utility, it gives unique chances of creating new links and areas of cooperation between people all over the planet (this site is one example of that). And if it's not a purely private market, there is no reason, economic or moral, why prices should be determined simply by the ISPs and site owners trying to squeeze as much as they can for the traffic and the rest of us weighing in for how much we want to pay.

Now of course some of the major telephone/ISP companies who actually run the physical cable/ routing "freeways" and smaller paths - but not the inside structure of local networks - want to make more mnoney than the relatively slim broadband fees they get today, and one way of doing that is simply to start asking for an "added rent" from the larger websites with heavy traffic to see that they get a faster driving lane on the broadband. And on the other hand, if people would want to access small and obscure websites (often non-proofit ones) they may have to pay extra to their ISP or it will take an eternity to open the site, or maybe not at all. This kind of pay-payola system is 180 degrees against the idea of an open web, and it is not likely to gain acceptance from the billions of ordinary web users and content creators. It would point the way into a web market as stifled as today's Hollywood where everybody's making prequels, bestseller adaptations and simplistic High-concept movies because the franchise is often more important than the actual film.