For Rent: My wireless network

[Lamplighter]

I enjoyed reading this OP-ED, and it seems like a reasonable idea

NY Times OP-ED
Won’t You Be My Wireless Neighbor?

FOR a long time, I relied on my Brooklyn neighbors’ generosity
— that is, their unsecured wireless networks — every time I connected to the Web.
<snip>
Then — crickets. The era of unintentional, unasked-for or simply unacknowledged
Internet sharing, it seemed, had come to an end.

Suddenly disconnected, I realized how lucky I’d been all those years,
having that tremendous body of information and awesome
communication technology at my fingertips, all basically free.
<snip>

Sometimes I’d imagine my anonymous benefactors, those people behind Netgear 1 or belkin54g,
thinking, “Well, I have Internet to spare.”

And, really, who doesn’t? Home wireless networks can usually support five or more computers,
yet there are only about 1.4 computers per American household.

For a few blindered weeks, I debated whether or not to finally “buy” the Internet.
The whole system, though, seemed wasteful: paying a company to come wire my apartment,
then paying a monthly fee so that I could maintain my own private territory within the cloud
of 20 or so wireless networks that were already humming around my apartment.

Why couldn’t I instead shell out a nominal fee — to someone, anyone —
to partake of the riches that were all around me in abundance?

Perhaps the solution is a simple, old-fashioned gesture.
Just knock on a neighbor’s door, and ask if she might be able to spare some wireless.