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Newhouse News Service weighs in with a well-balanced, quiet story on the Roadrunner/AOL/Time-Warner Wi-Fi situation: look, folks, if you sign a contract for a certain kind of service, you're obliged to follow the rules. Don't like the rules? Find a competitor that has different rules. If you know that you signed up for home service and you're sharing it with neighbors and strangers, you know you violated the terms of the agreement. There's no question about this.
Now we do have a question about monopoly: if AOL/TW is the only entity allowed to offer ISP service over a cable modem, and is using its lobbying power and other tools to prevent cable modem competition, then you have a different battlefield, but you're still bound by the terms of the agreement. (I think AOL, in fact, was in favor of competition when it was battling other cable companies, but I'm not sure fo their current stance.
If you want to share, then find an ISP that allows it. On that front:
Electronic Frontier Foundation looking for ISPs that encourage sharing connections: Lodrina Cherne, an intern at EFF, wrote on behalf of an effort by EFF "to compile a list of ISPs whose service agreements would support sharing of bandwidth via a WAP....Hopefully, once compiled, a list of these ISPs will help users to make informed choices about who they buy internet access from and show that there are a lot of good (and local!) providers out there." Email her if you know of such resources or are, in fact, an ISP that encourages this!
There are ways for ISPs to make new customers and friends, and still offer sharable service. Many of the Seattle-area smaller ISPs offer a variety of DSL plans which vary by the use you intend for the line rather than the bandwidth use.