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Network neutrality is something that should matter to everyone. Unfortunately, it suffers from a few significant problems that prevent it from becoming a major concern.

First of all, it’s slightly too complex for most people to grasp, especially when their only exposure to it is the 15 seconds it is covered in the evening news. Additionally, the lack of legally binding network neutrality in the United States has had virtually no effect on the average Internet user to date. Combined with a substantial private interest from Internet service providers, any legislative effort to ensure network neutrality ends in a fizzle.

Let’s start with an explanation of network neutrality. Although the term has a few competing definitions, it usually refers to the principle that companies who provide Internet services should not discriminate against any kind of content. Whether you’re Facebooking Johnny Depp, watching “Snorlax owns” on YouTube, or downloading the new Aly and AJ song, you will not be limited by the nature of your activity (conveniently ranked in order of importance).

Many people confuse network neutrality with bandwidth distribution. To be clear: Network neutrality prevents discrimination based on the type of content, not the amount of content. Obviously there are technical limits to how much content you can download at one time. There are no technical limitations with different kinds of content, however. So, why would an Internet service provider want to discriminate against certain kinds of traffic?

Imagine a lemonade stand on the side of the road. It’s summer time and business is booming for the two little girls operating the booth. They charge a nickel for a glass, and everyone is hydrated and content. One of the girls begins to notice that there are all different kinds of people buying her lemonade, from the friendly lawyer down the street, to the thirsty orphan boy who lives in a box.

“That lawyer has more money,” she says to her companion, “so why don’t we charge him more for our lemonade?” “Because it’s the same lemonade,” her friend replies. “Then what if we made two different kinds of lemonade? We can fill one of our pitchers with normal lemonade, and the other one can be half water.” Her friend looks confused. “We can charge a dime for the good lemonade and a nickel for the watered down stuff.” And a demon gets its horns. Content discrimination provides absolutely no other benefit to customers other than additional cost for the same or less service.

And if you think that Internet service providers could not be so cartoonishly despicable, consider the case of Comcast. Recently, it was reported by the Associated Press that Comcast was intentionally disconnecting BitTorrent traffic from users, regardless of its effect on network load. It did this by posing as the user and sending fake information requesting that the connections be terminated. This method of traffic control was made infamous by the Chinese government for censoring Internet access to its citizens.

The same technology it employed for this task was also responsible for a string of similar (possibly accidental) disconnects reported by customers using Google services. If you are unfamiliar with Comcast, it is the second largest Internet service provider in the United States today. It also owns 50 percent of Insight Communications, the Champaign-Urbana cable provider.

So, you should Google network neutrality as soon as possible; it’s only a matter of time before it’s not important anymore.