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He admits he went there to steal the item.

Petting theft just turned into Felony Commercial Burglary (Burglary being defined in California Penal Code as entering a premises with the intent to commit larceny).

Will it get pled down? Now he HAS to plea it down and take whatever they offer to avoid a felony record.

Saw this exact scenario play out when a college student was busted stealing a $20 CD.

I've always been struck by the system of justice in the US where, if you plead guilty, you "save the state the cost of a trial".

In most countries where the law is based on English Common Law (Canada, UK, Australia, etc) there is always a trial, to establish the facts of the case, to establish the exact culpability of the accused, to determine the extenuating circumstances. There is always a pre-sentence report, often a psychological assessment, etc. There is no procedural difference between a case where the defendant pleads guilty and where he pleads not guilty, and the defendant can change his plea at almost any stage of the trial. Occasionally, a judge will refuse to accept a Guilty plea from the defendant, insisting he wait until the evidence has been presented.

There are no misdemeanor options to fall back on; everything is the equivalent of a felony (precisely, they are all Criminal convictions, which the US considers equivalent to Felony convictions when assessing the seriousness of a record for a potential visitor, immigrant, etc). A conviction of the charge of theft of a single CD is a Criminal Code conviction; there are no other options.

The only times when you can plead guilty and avoid a trial is when the charge truly is a misdemeanor; eg traffic court.

This eliminates the incentive to create a system of law as exists in the US, with one or more applicable charges that carry huge penalties, along with a cascade of ever lesser charges and classes of charges, with corresponding lesser maximum penalties, which are then used (as you point out) to elicit guilty pleas.

It also insures that you have an opportunity to defend yourself without onerous implications should you not prevail, for whatever reason.

The truly innocent are placed in a very difficult position under the standard practices of US law (and standard procedures of prosecutors to elicit convictions).

What intrigues me is the fact that cable co's are trusting END USER EQUIPMENT to enforce limits that should be imposed at their own network ingress.

Besides, what if someone creates a DOCSIS compliant device of their own and hooks it up to the cable network? Considering how eager companies are to pounce for it, you're almost certain to run afoul of a few patents in the process, but you're clear in copyright, and hence immune to the DMCA as well, since the only copyright involved would be your own.

Knowingly and willfully taking more bandwidth than you've paid for is fraud and should be treated as such. Everything else is bullshit.

If you look at the role of guns in the formation of the US as a democracy, you might see that computers are the modern-day equivalent.