Privacy isn't dead its just being sold as a commodity now. Without realistic permission and protection.
I'd go even further: the ISPs only have this data as a result of business dealing and such data is not expected to be shared. Sharing of my history is not necessary for providing me with internet. You want to allow accounting firms to share your financial records as well?
They are only doing it because there's profit. Not because its a necessary aspect for providing internet access. Sharing your accounting data is similar. Another example: what if you go for counselling with psychologist etc? Is that protected?
Of course, Maine does not have the power to institute HIPAA like regulations for internet data and so do this instead. Nonetheless, I think the telecoms broadly have a point here.
Ultimately, I think you will find that a great deal of law (and, much more broadly, ethics) comes down to 'I know it when I see it' (or, perhaps, 'we (the people) agree that we know it when we see it'.) This can be a difficult thing for people with a somewhat rigidly rational approach to life to accept.
Pornography in law is famous because it is one of the few 'I know it when I see it' situations. While certainly the law lacks the rigor we enjoy in technical fields, it is a rare circumstance where that is the legal basis of an opinion.
While the law, for obvious reasons, rarely uses 'I know it when I see it' justifications, I suspect that that is what most ethical principles ultimately depend on, and to the extent that the law tries to be ethical, the same goes for it.
