But even before all this, the cable industry was trying to sell the public on why they should be allowed to engage in such schemes or even to do away with net neutrality entirely, possibly laying the groundwork for turning the public against net neutrality or at least making them care less about it, and the way people consume the Internet has changed in recent years in ways that may make it harder to appreciate the value of net neutrality. Moreover, if things continue on their present course the death of net neutrality may well be an inevitability. All you have to do to see why is note that perhaps the single website most at the epicenter of the net neutrality debate is Netflix, which as Oliver explains reached a paid peering agreement with Comcast earlier this year and then complained about it, even though Comcast is still under the terms of the old rules the courts threw out earlier this year as a condition of its acquisition of NBC Universal.

As early as 2010 it was reported that video made up more than half of all Internet traffic, and as early as 2011 it was reported that Netflix was the single biggest driver of all Internet traffic, making up as much as 30 percent of all traffic during peak hours. As cord-cutting has become a bigger and bigger buzzword, both of these have become even more disproportionate, and if you talk to some people, may become even more so in the future, especially if - as even some backers of cord-cutting envision - all the viewing of video that currently takes place on traditional linear television moves to the Internet. Were that to happen, the Internet would effectively become a conduit for the delivery of video with all its other uses being reduced to a sideline, something that can piggyback on the lines that exist primarily to deliver video, even if video makes up only a fraction of its actual popularity.

Even if ISPs decide to unleash the capacity they already have but don’t use, and even if they decide to engage in a massive rollout of fiber or other technologies we can't even imagine yet to massively upgrade capacity, the fact that a disproportionate amount of the reason for doing so would have to do with a use that comes from a disproportionately small number of websites would result in it making too much sense to charge those websites for the upgrades that - at least from the ISPs’ perspective - they are almost solely responsible for. It would make too much sense even if the ISPs suddenly decided to perform those upgrades out of the goodness of their heart, without any consideration of specific circumstances whatsoever.

The way to avoid this fate is to find a way to reduce the amount of video going over the Internet as we know it today as much as possible, or at least find a way to reduce the strain on the Internet caused by it. The opportunities for doing so are limited, given the appeal of the Internet for viewing video and the reason why it takes up so much bandwidth, and especially given the potential popularity of higher-quality video standards like 4K that could wipe out any gains. Better video compression technologies will help, but ultimately, it goes back to a point I’ve made before: the Internet is good at delivering a large amount of content to a small number of people, but broadcasting is good at delivering a small amount of content to a large number of people. With broadcasting, and linear television more generally, you only need to send out a signal once and anyone with the proper equipment can hitch on to the stream. This makes it ideal for anything where a large number of people want to watch the same thing at the exact same time, meaning primarily live events. It may not be a complete magic bullet (although DVR functionality would help meet some of the demand for on-demand video as well), but given the popularity of some live events it could play a key role in allowing the Internet to continue to be the hub of innovation it’s been for the better part of twenty years now.

Perhaps it’s fitting that in the same meeting it passed the proposed net neutrality rules, the FCC also passed a proposed framework for the incentive auction. One could determine whether the Internet as we know it will continue to exist. The other could determine whether or not its demise is inevitable.