You don’t have to travel as far as China to find prominent Internet companies engaging in censorship .

AOL has taken to bouncing messages that refer to a petition against its decision to use Goodmail’s email validation service, according to reports in C|News and The Los Angeles Times .

This is the latest twist in a long running saga over AOL’s decision to charge for the assured delivery of email into its customers’ inboxes.

I can scarcely believe the stories are true.

All ethical considerations aside, politically the censorship plays completely into the hands of those who fear, rightly it seems, that the new arrangement will restrict Internet traditions of free speech and communication (among other things).

UPDATE: It seems that the censorship was an unfortunate accident caused by a “software glitch”.AOL, goodmail, email, spam, censorship, free speech, email tax

A month ago, AOL announced that it would hire the firm Goodmail to extract money from organisations and companies in order to ensure the delivery of “certified safe” emails into AOL customer inboxes.

According to the New York Times, the development is “a major change in the economics of the Internet”.

When the shift from its free whitelist to a pay-per-email scheme was announced, some supported it . An op-ed piece in the New York Times by Esther Dyson also argued it was a good idea.

Others were horrified, calling it a naked grab for cash or an attack on free speech .

Bennett Haseldon has now produced a good piece on the development, which has been posted on Slashdot.

He argues that “the market” will not serve to correct imbalances in the new system and, more importantly, that the Goodmail system does not respect the fundamental your right to receive email from whomever you want, not only from people who have paid Goodmail (or anyone else) a fee. Interesting reading.goodmail, AOL, email, email stamps, whitelist, guaranteed delivery

Four interesting things from the world of email in general:

• ClickZ provides a brief overview of an email’s journey from the time you click Send to the message’s arrival at its destination.
• According to CNet News , a judge has ordered that a defendant needs to hand over all his email to the plaintiff. What’s interesting about this is that the defendant’s email is housed with Gmail. Gmail, you will remember, says in its privacy policy that deleted emails “may remain in our offline backup systems” indefinitely. “Delete it and it’s gone” doesn’t seem to apply with Gmail. That’s bad luck for the defendant.
• In The New York Times, David Pogue posts a funny email from Hotmail about how to deal with unwanted email from the provider. It runs, “Free Hotmail users: If you do not wish to receive Hotmail member letters, you may close your Hotmail account.”
• The New York Times also has an op-ed piece on Goodmail (registration required, but worth it) , the company that has been hired by AOL to provide “safe” delivery of wanted emails to its customers. There was a fair bit of coverage about this new “email tax” a few weeks ago.

email, gmail, hotmail, goodmail, AOL, privacy

Over 50 organisations have written an open letter to AOL asking it to rethink plans to use Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail, which the letter describes as “a threat to the free and open Internet”.

The groups range across the social and political spectrum from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the Gun Owners of America.

The letter suggests:

This system would create a two-tiered Internet in which affluent mass emailers could pay AOL a fee that amounts to an “email tax” for every email sent, in return for a guarantee that such messages would bypass spam filters and go directly to AOL members’ inboxes. Those who did not pay the “email tax” would increasingly be left behind with unreliable service. Your customers expect that your first obligation is to deliver all of their wanted mail, and this plan is a step away from that obligation.

If you feel strongly about this issue, you can sign the letter as an individual or as an organisation .AOL, email tax, email, goodmail, Internet, not apple mail

A little while ago AOL decided to charge organisations and companies for guaranteed delivery of fully-hyperlinked and imaged emails in users’ inboxes.

A New York Times article described it as “a major change in the economics of the Internet”.

Many saw this a bad thing. Some because it looks like a naked grab for cash , others because it creates a two-tier email system, others because they view it as an attack on free speech (SpamHaus too), others because it might be anti-competitive, putting another squeeze on small businesses but easily absorbed by larger corporations.

Seth Godin, however, puts his head up above the parapet and provides a robust defence of the idea.

It’s all about friction, apparently. He concludes that everyone’s a winner. The only people who will lose are spammers and marketers who measure tonnage.AOL, Yahoo!, delivery assurance, email, stamps, spammers, goodmail, metrics, friction