My Dad got us @Home cable Internet, which is the same infrastructure Comcast currently uses, in around 1997 when it first became available. It eventually became AT&T broadband Internet (attbi), and then Comcast bought it (IIRC, might be missing something).
My older brother heard about Napster right when it came out and I remember getting very impressive download speeds (I think I saw it get to 600 KB/s or 1 MB/s at some point). We were also part of the batch of people that got banned for uploading Metallica mp3s. After that I found GNUtella (although I had no clue what GNU was at the time, just heard about it as an alternative service) and Kazaa. I also moved on to mIRC to get mainly anime and music videos. All in the late 90s, early 2000s. The infrastructure has served us very well!
I don't really know about the laws, but I assume the issue in municipalities is laying down new infrastructure, even though you'd think Comcast monopoly is more of an issue.