@Brent Gardner

Of course they're operationally ignorant. Name one corporate monopoly that actually *satisfies* its victims (no, then they'd be 'customers') as a matter of course, and doesn't spend millions of its victims' payment dollars on The Best Congress Money Can Buy. If they need to buy more Congresscritters, they just up the subscription rates - it's not like they have to worry about competitors. Sort of like Congress... though I'm not quite clear on who learned that trick from whom. But the point is, Comacast et al are spending money and time (money again) on this sort of BS when they could be at least marginaly keeping up with what residential customers in the Free World consider marginally acceptable Net access (like the 10 Mbps down/2 up that is mid-range in Singapore, or the 1 Gbps being rolled out in Korea. Think about that for a minute, and then go back to your 1.5 Mbps 'high-speed' connection.)

If there was ever a poster child for striking down the whole concept of corporate personhood (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Personhood_Debate for a discussion) and the century-plus of Really Bad Law based on it, Comcast and the other megacomms would be on the *very* short list.