The talk of the net nowadays is this news which says that AOL is rolling out a service that would allow companies to bypass their spam filters if they pay a fee, on the order of $2 or $3 per 1000 messages.
Some smaller organizations are up in arms, claiming that AOL will shut them out if they don't pay the fee. That's not what the program is about, at least by all indications. AOL is claiming that mail delivery of "non-certified" mail will continue pretty much as it has been, although their partner who is implementing it, Goodmail Systems, says that it cannot guarantee that all non-certified email with web links and images will be delivered. (Apparently a lot of ISPs use those characteristics to identify spam, though I think it is a rather poor indication.) Richard Gingras, CEO of Goodmail says, "This is all about protecting consumers from spam, phishing, viruses and fraud." I must admit that doesn't make a lot of sense if AOL has no plans to tighten the noose around bulk senders after signing up the whitelist participants. Still, a lot of people will get very upset if their solicited email starts going away. I can't see AOL surviving that.
Personally I see it as a way of legitimizing spam and selling access to people's mailboxes.
They say all the other ISPs could jump on the bandwagon, but frankly I doubt this model works for all but the largest ISPs. Otherwise it just gets totally unwieldy. The New York Times is not going to make deals with 5,000 ISPs nationwide.
Anyway I've only done a little research — Snopes is doing more thorough research, so keep an eye on them.
