Maybe a better example is paying more for electricity from 'green' sources like solar/wind. This is an option offered by PG&E right now. Comparing to websites,

Maybe a better example is paying more for electricity from 'green' sources like solar/wind. This is an option offered by PG&E right now. Comparing to websites, you can have all the "common" websites that have local caches, peered with your ISP directly, for low rate X. If you want access to a niche video streaming startup that has to go through other peers we haven't optimized for, you pay more. It's still not a perfect analogy, but it forms a similar comparison "Where do I get (content|electricty) from?"