This is the sort of stuff that happens when you have monopoly (or even duopoly) service in a business - you get utterly arbitrary (and vaguely defined) terms of service.

With the kind of access most people have to broadband, if an ISP cuts you off for "abuse", you can end up completely in limbo. Which makes me wonder - with the nascent build-out of downloadable TV and movies, how many people are going to end up in the cross hairs of the local provider? You could easily push past the (not at all clear) bandwidth limits simply by buying "too much" through Amazon's Unbox, Wal-Mart's new service, iTunes, or whatever else comes down the pike over the next year. Heck, if you decided to travel overseas for a month, and watched TV via SlingBox, you could end up utterly screwed.

The whole IP TV thing is going to hit a brick wall if ISPs keep acting like this - and without competition, they have no real incentive to act differently.

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