'TANSTAAFL', acronym for 'There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch', may be familiar to those of you who have taken a college economics class or two. Whenever you hear word 'Free' in association with a product or service it's a good idea to keep it in mind because, in truth, nothing is free. Someone, somewhere, somehow, is bearing an economic cost; and so it is with free Wi-Fi hotspots. For most part any of free Wi-Fi hotspots you'll come across will have some sort of quid pro quo associated with them.

If you go to a McDonalds, for example, you can get a bit of free Wi-Fi with purchase of a meal, if you go to Panera Bread or Port City Java, although not explicitly stated, it's implied that you're expected, as you should be, to buy something for privilege of taking up table space while surfing 'net.

Along with businesses several Municipal and International Airport Authorities, as well as a growing number of airline club lounges, are providing free Wi-Fi in an effort to sway travellers, who may have a choice between several carriers or nearby airports, to choose them. Similarly, more and more hotels are offering free Wi-Fi for their guests so, while Wi-Fi hotspot may be advertised as free, it's cost is rolled into room rate or expensed to advertising.

Before downloads, customers would be visited by digital priests of their respective religious persuasions. With great pomp and circumstance, they would "pledge" not to forward their books to everybody in world without compensating authors and publishers. Break pledge, and you'd find yourself in purgatory, hand-copying old encyclopedias.

Or maybe a totalitarian law would work instead. First-offenders guilty of unlawful content reproduction would have to wear a scratchy wool eye patch for one year. For a second crime, patch would be now a mask. We could set up toll-free hot-lines and reward people for spying on their neighbors.

The Real Point

See my real point here? No easy way exists to loosen DRM grip--this complicated issue can't be addressed with good old-fashioned guilt and fear. But e-book standards for DRM and formats would help. I am counting on laws of capitalism, which always prevail. A demand will eventually be met with supply, and I'm hoping that right set of standard will break from pack and simplify digital content landscape. That will be a blessed day. Microsoft, Adobe and Palm and others now have their own special technology fee tacked on to price of e-books. And that complicates merchandising. We e-book merchants would rather not have multiple cost structures for same e-book.