Glenn Fleishman shared a piece he freelanced to The New York Times whose point is, simply, that even free WiFi needs a business model.

The story is about how some coffee houses are turning off the WiFi because they don't like the fact that their shops become offices. People shut up around WiFi. They bring in their PCs, turn on, and tune out the world around them. They may buy a coffee (increasingly they don't) but that's all you're going to get out of them.

Coffee shops and restaurants have beren the leaders in the WiFi "hotspot" movement based on the assumption they will be good for business, that people who WiFi also eat and drink.

Turns out we don't. Not that much, anyway. And we don't leave the table, either.

All of which leaves these shops without a valid business model. Would those using free WiFi object too much if they grabbed a piece of your browser's real estate and forced ads on you while you worked? How about if they put in a WiFi tip jar? I'm open to suggestions here.

It surprises me that this may be what kills the free WiFi movement dead. I would have expected it would be the risk from hackers or spammers using the resource. Or the RIAA cracking down because free WiFi'ers were using p2p systems. Or porn. (The picture is Coffee Shop, by Aligi Sassu, from the Liffeyside blog in Dublin, Ireland.)

I gurantee these issues will stifle the rise of alternative, government-funded WiFi, whether on the streets or in libraries. Shiite, Sunni and Christian politicians will all demand filters, as will the copyright industries. This is regardless of the success that phone incumbents may have in simply outlawing municipal WiFi.

Meanwhile, of course, Europe is experimenting with this and Asia is moving full speed ahead.

Guess whose kids are going to be sitting in the CEO chairs 20 years from now?