With the US legal situation that might be feasible, but in some countries you can get yourself into pretty deep trouble. From what I remember, German law in par

With the US legal situation that might be feasible, but in some countries you can get yourself into pretty deep trouble. From what I remember, German law in particular makes this a really bad idea. (aside from the fact that cease-and-desists cost money in Germany) Austrian law is often quite close to the German counterpart so I'm not going to risk it, even though I strongly doubt anyone would try to leech my wifi around here. (mine is the only wifi signal I can detect, and we get about one car per hour on our road, so not exactly where it's at) EDIT: I'm no lawyer, and it's been a while since I read the articles on the topic, but the issue was effectively that you fall into one of two categories operating an open AP: - you get treated as an ISP. In that case I think you need to establish some kind of (implied or explicit) contractual relationship with your "customers" (paying or not) and are subject to various regulations. Hardly feasible. - everything your "users" do is your responsibility. I misremembered some of this stuff, and there are no doubt various subtleties I didn't go into. The subject was covered in various articles in the popular German c't magazine. http://www.heise.de/ct/ http://www.heise.de/ct/