The debate about whether Internet providers should be able to deliver some Web sites faster than others for an extra fee generated some strong rhetoric Friday. In an interview with The Washington Post, Tim Berners-Lee — credited with inventing the World Wide Web — lashed out at that plan, calling the concept a form of bribery.

The term "bribery" provoked pushback among some readers. In our weekly livechat (which you should join sometime), one of our readers asked a rhetorical question: How are Internet fast lanes any different from paying more to "sit up front in the big seats on an airline"? If you want better service, maybe you should pay for it.

The fact that folks are naturally turning to airlines to understand net neutrality suggests the air travel industry may have something to teach us. So let's unpack this analogy a bit. I'll tackle this in two parts: One will address how describing it as "paying for the big seats" doesn't adequately capture the net neutrality problem, and the second will tweak that analogy to try to help put the net neutrality issue in more concrete terms.

To return to our reader's question — one that's likely shared by a lot of folks — paying extra for a service is a quintessentially American idea. That's just a basic market principle: Making a service more valuable comes at a cost. That cost should not only be borne by the consumer, but the creator of the service should be expected to reap a profit for offering that extra value.

In that respect, the airline analogy is internally consistent. If you want more legroom, better food and high-quality cocktails, you can have them — for a price. It's up to you whether you want to pay that price, and some people do.

But let's be clear: Paying Internet service providers for the right to serve consumers faster and more smoothly — a concept known as "paid prioritization" — is not like being a customer on an airline. For starters, while you can pay for better treatment on an airplane, everyone on the plane gets to their destination at the same time, whether they're flying in coach or business class. Paid prioritization is different in that it would actually speed up some types of Internet traffic. So for the airline analogy to hold, the first-class section would have to detach from the rest of the plane in mid-flight and go supersonic. Planes don't tend to do that.

Some economists have also pointed out that broadband is a "two-sided market" — that ISPs do business with both content companies and consumers. In that sense, content companies are like consumers. But because they're businesses, they're not really consumers in the way you or I might think of ourselves, which simply serves to muddle the air travel analogy. Businesses, after all, don't have knees.

A more accurate way of couching this dilemma in airline terms might look like this, as I said to our reader Friday:

Air traffic controllers determine who gets to take off and who gets to land, and when. They also help guide aircraft on predetermined routes in between airports. Suppose air traffic controllers were allowed to strike commercial deals with airlines for priority treatment. For instance, you could imagine a scenario where American Airlines and United paid air traffic controllers so that they would always be first in line, and have more of their planes moved. That would be tough for smaller airlines, like AirTran or Southwest, who perhaps couldn't afford to pay the controllers to leave the airport as quickly as United can. That situation might also discourage new airlines from starting up. If even AirTran and Southwest were being squeezed, what hope would a new entrant have at surviving?

In this analogy, air traffic controllers are like the ISP — they control who comes and goes, and at what rate. Content companies are like the airlines. They can choose to pay a fee for better service. But crucially, you as the consumer have little control over these business relationships and what they do to shape your air travel choices.

That's an airline analogy that seems to capture the dilemma.