AOL Allegedly Censors 'Email Tax' Opponents

Mediacitizen writes "AOL was accused yesterday of censoring email to AOL customers that included a link to a site opposing AOL's proposed 'email tax.' Over 300 people reported that they had tried sending AOL subscribers messages that contained a link to www.DearAOL.com, but received a bounceback message informing them that their email 'failed permanently.' After the DearAOL.com Coalition -- 600 organizations convened by Free Press, MoveOn and EFF -- notified the press of this blocking, AOL quickly cleared the opposition URL from their filters, alleging a 'software glitch.'"

Stupid, but legal

[nurb432]

No law says they cant filter out what ever they want too, as long as they publsh the list to their subscribers ( and that may not be required, but good practice ) We aernt talking a goverment here. there is no 'censorship' clause..

Time for AOL users to kick off the training wheels

[SuperNinjaMonkey]

if they don't like it. Otherwise AOL is well within their rights to do as they wish. AOL is a private network. Let the consumer vote with their dollars.

Re:AOL alienating its customers...

[mrowton]

Gmail would obviously never do this. I don't *think hotmail or yahoo would either. As users get more educated about webmail and spam then they will start making more intelligent decisions over who handles their e-mail. So in a way I'm glad AOL is doing this. Its just going to speed up the process of natural selection and webmail providers.

This is actually FUNNY

[zappepcs]

This is funny because all these large corporate entities are proving (by shooting their own feet) that the Google 'do no evil' mantra is worth more than any advertising campaign....

I can see the future where such 'news articles' cause havoc at the next shareholder's meetings... sadly, that day has not yet arrived, but as the world of commerce gets flatter, it will...

As we all already know...

[Itninja]

It's easier to ask for forgivness than for permission.

Re:AOL alienating its customers...

[crackerjack911]

Well, what about the benefit of the doubt in cases like this.

AOL has to protect its members from all sorts of attacks, and included in these are phishing and URL redirection that often come from email solicitation. AOL could simply have had a filter that would not link to anything with AOL in the URL except from specific sources (you see where I'm going with this ...).

Sure, there is always an air of Big Brother and evil corporations trying to oppress something ... but its not always the case.

"software glitch"

[swelke]

The glitch, of course, being that they got caught.

Re:AOL alienating its customers...

[keraneuology]

AOL is driving down a road that will further alienate them from their users

Do you think any significant quantity of AOL's users care about things like this? There are two and only two things that will get AOL's attention: legislation/legal action or if really popular websites started to block AOL users from using their services. If MySpace blocked all traffic from AOL users until AOL scrapped their email tax and fired the person who blocked this email then (after the necessary lawsuits which AOL would ultimately lose) AOL would fire the person responsible for blocking these emails (or at least a very public scapegoat) and would scrap the email tax.

Ain't gonna happen though.

Re:People still use AOL?!?!

[MrFrank]

AOL has their customers lost in a blizzard. Most of their customers don't know what the "internet" is. They just use the AOL GUI for all their browsing and email. Like my sister in-law who pays $21.95/month for dial up service. She's just used to AOL. She likes the nice little portal uses to dial up.

I've tried to get her to move off. USfamily.net is $8.25/month. I would think saaving a single mom with a 16 year old $13/month would be a good thing.

AOL isn't marketing to the /. crowd. Look at their commercials. They want the suburban soccer mom who thinks the internet is a big bad place, and only AOL can protect them and their kids.

Oh, and she doesn't want to take any chance at loosing her AOL ID. She has given it out to all of her chat buddies.

AOL - irking customers since 1983

[blcamp]

AOL exists on name recognition and the ignorance of the customers that choose to use them as an ISP. Nothing new here. As such, this becomes the modus operandi for everything it does... "let's block these mails, but show them as bounced messages... our users are too dumb to know the difference anyway, right?" Still, nothing new here.

But AOL itself is stupid, thinking that EVERYONE is so blissfully unaware of it's business practices. Even moreso, that anyone would be OK with it.

I don't know which is worse... that AOL thinks it can get away with an e-mail tax, that it can censor e-mails opposing it, or that it thought it was perfectly OK to do either (or both).

Hey, AOL... there are still parts of your feet still down there... keep shooting.

The common user needs to understand this situation

[Fluidic Binary]

I think abuses like this need to be more widely publicized and discussed to educated the masses of ignorant users. I find this just as offensive as having my snail mail filtered (even if AOL is a company and not a federal service). The common user needs to understand this situation.

ISPs in my experience have an attitude that it is their service and the users who depend on it are merely 'subs' (subscribers). While this perception may in fact be accurate, most users see it as 'their service' and view the ISP merely as a provider. So on one hand, most users spend their days thinking they are the 'always right' and 'all powerful due to their dollar' consumer. On the other hand ISPs tend to see their users as 'fat dumb and happy till something needs maintenance'.

This dichotomy can exist, because in the end most users are too ignorant about IT to know what they can reasonably demand and not reasonably demand. A user is just as likely to call AOL to demand help with excel as they are about their mail being filtered.

In the end users don't own the service they are renting, but ISPs need to learn to respect the rights of their users. The only way that is going to happen is if somehow, Joe six pack gets as pissed about this, as he would be if someone was filtering his mail.

Re:Opposing Opinion

[benjjj]

Suppressing "propaganda"? Since when is a website set up by a group of people attempting to provide a counterpoint to a massive commercial spin campaign "propaganda"? You've got it backwards. AOL is the propagandist.

That sentence about the "public interest" is misleading, as well. Sure, AOL doesn't need the public interest in the way an elected official does, but if you replace " the public interest" with "demand" (both are "what the people want"), I think the irrationality of AOL's actions becomes clear. People depend on email, and they expect it to be at least as reliable as snail mail. If AOL is censoring random emails without telling customers what keywords to avoid, people will never know if their emails get through, and will, if they're smart, flee AOL en masse.

Re:The future of "free speech"

[tomhudson]

It is, if you exercise your right of free speech by going to the web site http://www.dearaol.com/ [dearaol.com] and signing the petition. The idea that spammers can pay a fraction of a cent to bypass spam filters is as bad as the games the phone company plays with unlisted numbers and caller ID.

You get caller ID

Telemarketing company pays extra to block caller ID on all outbound calls

You pay extra for an unlisted number

Telemarketing company pays extre for list of unlsted numbers

You pay for call block

Telemarketing company pays to bypass call block

Corporations always put shareholders first

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should you think that AOL should be different? AOL is doing this blocking in order to fulfill the interests of their shareholders. The blocking was removed to fulfill the interests of their shareholders. They are required by law in the US to do so. In fact, if they didn't they could go to jail for failing to put the interests of the shareholders first. Why do you think that so many companies get fined for doing environmental damage? If it's going to save money by destroying some stream somewhere then they will do it for the best interests of the shareholders. If they are caught, well the fines are often nothing compared to the money they can save. AOL is no different than any other corporation in the US. Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Apple, and AOL (along with every other corporation) are all cut from the same cloth. The law made them that way. If you don't like it, CHANGE THE LAW.

Good reason to sign on...

[fak3r]

For now, the best thing to do to oppose it is to visit DearAOL http://www.dearaol.com/ [dearaol.com] -- and signup in the right hand gutter "Sign The Letter as an Individual"

Their petition states:
In February 2006, AOL announced that it would accept payment for incoming emails. For these certified emails, it would skip its usual anti-spam filters and guarantee delivery for cash. Our coalition believes that the free passage of email between Internet users is a vital part of what makes the Internet work. When ISPs demand a cut of "pay-to-send" email, they're raising tollbooths on the open Net, interfering with the passage of data by demanding protection money at the gates of their customers' computers.

Where's the problem?

[ConvenienceComputers]

I don't see any problem with AOL filtering out emails that they consider hurtful. They use the "AOL Constitution" known as TOS (Terms of Service). An AOL subscriber must abide by this TOS contract if s/he wants to continue being a subscriber of AOL's service.

I do not like AOL, and that is why I am not an AOL subscriber.

You join as a subscriber, you play by their rules. Once you join, you make a connection to their network and, that's just it, you are on THEIR NETWORK. It is their land and their 'domain.' They make the laws - their rules. I think you get the point.

I don't see the issue

[XMilkProject]

Ya ya, we all hate AOL, but lets be reasonable here...

This WAS spam was it not? The article clearly says that 300 people reported they couldn't send a copy of this email. If 300 people reported it, I can only imagine how many thousands tried to send it.

If I was a spam filter, and I saw thousands of copies of the same email going out, I'd filter it too.

My server, my rules.

[Kelson]

That's been a mantra among the anti-spam community for years. According to that doctrine, AOL is perfectly within its rights to block whatever the hell it wants subject to its users' preferences.

That's a key issue: AOL's mail filters are not accountable to MoveOn, the EFF, Craigslist, or anyone else involved in DearAOL. They are accountable only to AOL and AOL's users.

Re:Where's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an AOL subscriber, but I might email a few.

I'm not their property. My conversations with their members are none of AOL's business.

Re:Opposing Opinion

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

wait, wait, I thought capitalism was supposed to ensure that private corporate interests were aligned with the interests of their customers through a system of market feedback and self-interest... oh wait, I was confusing reality with bullshit again.
sorry, my bad

AOL filters lots more....

[The Mutant]

I run a medium sized mailing list off my server, you-suck.com

I've got several dozen subscribers in the AOL domain, and have consistently have had problems with bouncing / filtering out of AOL. And usually for bogus reasons.

About one year ago they were filtering ALL email that contained tinurl tags, as a "security" measure. Just to show you how totally bogus it was, even the text tinyurl, tiny (space) url , etc were filtered - that is, just the phrase or two words, NOT EVEN A URL!

Recently someone replied to a post with a string of profanity, including the word FUCK several times in a row. Now everyone on the list are good friends, have been for years, and we jerk each others chains a great deal. No problem. For us at least, as AOL didn't see it that way, and banned ALL email from you-suck.com due to what the headers of their bounces claimed were"profanity violations". I know for a fact that nobody on my list complained to AOL as most are family and the rest good friends.

Totally bogus.

I couldn't even email folks exaplaing what was going on from you-suck.com, and had to use Gmail to tell folks about the problem and ask them for their help in getting email from my domain unblocked (AOL won't do squat for non subscribers).

Bingo. I sent out Gmail invites to every one of my AOL subscribers and two weeks ago the last switched over. Problem solved.

But not really - from AOLs pov. Several of those impacted noted that lots of email was helpfully being screened by AOL, including loads of email from what should be whitelisted, top of the shelf domains - CitiBank, Fidelity, yahoo!, I'm not sure what else.

So of these two dozen former AOL subscribers from my list, at least six are now former AOL subscribers as well, and several others are making plans to bolt as well.

And telling all their friends about AOL, the Nanny ISP.

A couple frustrating years of my time dealing with AOL bogus bounces, and I managed to get a bunch of folks off AOL.

Works for me.