What's wrong with me? Haven't I heard about how malicious wardrivers can use my connection from across the street to stage their hacking operations? How my neighbors can steal my bandwidth so they don't have to pay for their own? How I'm exposing my home network to attacks from the inside? Yup.
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.
In mid-April, Comcast sent letters to some of its subscribers claiming that their IP addresses had been used to download copyrighted movies. Since Comcast is not likely to improve customer satisfaction and retention with this strategy, it's probable the letter was a result of pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America or one of its members. And to Comcast's credit, it stopped short of direct accusation; instead it gives users an out. Says the letter, "If you believe in good faith that the allegedly infringing works have been removed or blocked by mistake or misidentification, then you may send a counter notification to Comcast."
That's good enough for me. I've already composed my reply in case I receive one of these letters someday. "Dear Comcast, I am so sorry. I had no idea that copyrighted works were being downloaded via my IP address; I have a wireless router at home and it's possible that someone may have been using my connection at the time. I will do my best to secure this notoriously vulnerable technology, but I can make no guarantee that hackers will not exploit my network in the future."
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