As Peter Cohan and Tobias Buckell have covered, TimeWarner's (TWX) AOL is considering giving away its content to nonsubscribers, but along with that earthshaking, well, shake-up -- it is probably not a bad idea to keep in mind what ConsumerAffairs.com has to say: AOL's Problems Worsening as Consumer Complaints Mount. 

Boing Boing, digg and plenty of others helped circulate the hilarious-except-when-it-happens-to-you debacle of one customer's attempt  to get AOL to cancel his dial-up service last month. That resulted in an apology from the company and the firing of the phone agent involved.

There is no correlation between the release of the tape and today's reports of possible changes in AOL's business model, but as someone who has -- at least I hope I have -- long ago put his phone sales-and-retention employment experience behind him, I know that the pressure to keep accounts active in a highly competitive environment can be intense. That doesn't excuse the employee's methods, or necessarily warrant AOL to accept responsibility for its retention policies rather than scapegoat the one employee that got busted on tape, but it does point out the striking change that might occur in the company culture if AOL does go ahead with this idea. 

Giving away content can be one of the most powerful ways to grow the influence of a business. Sacrificing the revenue of billions from paid accounts might be a huge price to pay for that growth. But then again, so many outfits, large and small, offer similar services faster, better, and cheaper. Maybe AOL should look into relieving itself of a multi-billion dollar headache.