Safe and Insecure

I opened up my wireless home network to the world, and I've never felt more comfortable. . . . .
So why am I doing this? In a word, privacy. By making my Internet connection available to any and all who happen upon it, I have no way to be certain what kinds of songs, movies and pictures will be downloaded by other people using my IP address. And more important, my ISP has no way to be certain if it's me.

Long ago I ran a BBS (a bulletin board system is a computer with an open modem where people could dial in an send e-mail, exchange files, play games, chat, etc. This is what geeks did before the Internet was available.) In running my BBS I did some research into the common carrier law. This is the law that protects the phone company (at the time) and ISP's today from the actions of their subscribers. In essence, if you don't monitor the activity on your system / network (e.g. Don't listen in on calls), then you are not liable for the actions of those on the network.

If you are providing wireless network access for your neighborhood, houseguests, or even patrons in your restaurant, then you are a carrier and protected. Just in case you were not sure, IANAL.

So the question really is if you are in violation of your Terms of Service or not. My experience has been that most cable Internet providers restrict your usage to you and your household - no operating servers (e-mail, web, etc.) This is because of the shared bandwidth nature (bus topology) of the connection. If you are consuming mass quantities, then your neighbor's connection slows down. Same is true of most satellite systems. I am sure there are some satellite and cable ISP's that offer guaranteed bandwidth, so obviously they are the exception to my comments.

xDSL on the other hand is guaranteed bandwidth (star topology). In essence you have a dedicated pipe between you and the central office. Granted if you could consume all the bandwidth at the CO then you would slow everyone else down, which is why they throttle you and have a really fat pipe there. Now xDSL typically allows servers and other activities that could result in greater bandwidth consumption because you cannot degrade the performance of your neighbors connection.

So to sum up, it would seem that this strategy would work to defray suits from MPAA, RIAA, etc., and if you were running xDSL it may even be allowed under your TOS. But, your TOS probably says you are responsible for anything that goes over your pipe. This means you are responsible to your ISP, not to anyone else. So if your ISP says "Hey, you can't do that!" then they might pull your plug. It would seem to me that loosing your ISP and having to switch to one of the competitors would be much less of a inconvenience then being sued by RIAA, MPAA, SCO, etc.

Bottom line, if you think there is a chance that incriminating traffic might take place on your connection (by you or someone else) then you may improve your odds of claiming it wasn't you by adopting this strategy. But when you are trying to download game patches or some other large download, and it is taking a lot longer then you expected, remember that is the price you pay for freedom in this country.

What you need is a router that provides bandwidth priority to some connections and not others (I forget the term), and also that partitions the public portion of your personal network off from the private portion. And instead of claiming ignorance, claim you are a nice guy who just wants to help out your neighbors, houseguests or restaurant patrons.

This is in no way an endorsement or avocation for any of the actions outlined in this comment, the comments of others, or the original news post. It is just an observation.