What with the administration stopping data collection, there's likely not much there to steal. These horse thieves have broken into an empty barn...

With respect to the defective highway analogy, I think it falls short for many consumers. In a world with many roads, the purveyor of a defective highway will have trouble finding users. However, if you live on the far end of a dead-end road, are you likely to sniff at the potholes and go cross country, or are you likely to grudgingly use said road? I expect most of us would drive, slowly, down the potholed road. I live in metropolitan area of approximately 1M in the western US, and I have exactly one choice for broadband: comcast cable. As much as I hate them and their RST packets, they still are more attractive to me than dial up.