What happens when that booty becomes too shriveled and diseased to shake for cash? Honey, you gotta start giving it away.

Ars Technica has posted a rumor that AOL — hemorrhaging over 850,000 customers per quarter — is going to give free access to its broadband service. Dial-up users will still have to pay, but if you’ve got your own pipe, you can experience all the great content AOL has to offer… for free!

Which is… what, exactly? We here at the Consumerist would never be AOL subscribers, but we’re a bit unclear what AOL offers its current broadband subscribers besides outsourced, branded broadband. If you take the broadband out of the equation, why would you go through AOL, even for free? The great selection of ads they’ll profusely vomit on your desktop?

AOL may offer free Internet access [Ars Technica]