Update: AOL says emails protesting its own service blocked by accident

John Byrne
Published: Friday April 14, 2006

Update: AOL responds to RAW STORY report

America Online's communications director Nicholas Graham said emails protesting AOL's new antispam program -- which will require businesses to pay a fee to ensure their email is delivered -- were not deliberately blocked and instead the product of a system error.

“I think the innocent nature of this is clear," Graham said late Friday. "A glitch is a glitch is a glitch. There is as many as 65 other domains that were impacted without any commonality altogether.”

Graham told RAW STORY that emails containing other domains had also been blocked.

“The other domains belong to some beverage company," he said. "One of them belongs to an online community networking service. I think another domain belongs to some ISPs."

Graham called the incident an "innocent mistake" and noted that the company had been delivered "millions" of emails protesting their new certified mail program since it was announced earlier this year.

He said the company will not block email based on "ideological" content.

RAW STORY's earlier report follows below.

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A coalition of groups opposing a plan by America Online to charge a fee for preferred email delivery alleged Thursday that protest emails they had sent to AOL subscribers had been deliberately blocked, RAW STORY has found.

According to the "DearAOL" coalition, which is trying to derail a proposed plan under which AOL will charge businesses to ensure their mail is delivered, at least 300 members reported that they had tried sending messages containing at link to the DearAOL.com protest site but received bounceback messages saying their email had "failed permanently."

AOL told PC Magazine Friday the problem was a technical glitch.

"AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said Friday morning that emails containing roughly fifty to sixty domain names, not just DearAOL, were blocked during a routine upgrade of an undisclosed piece of software on the company's servers. Graham said he did not know which piece of software was upgraded, and declined to provide the names of other domains which were affected."

PC Magazine also confirmed Thursday that emails sent with the DearAOL address were blocked, after sending a message themselves.

DearAOL is fighting to snuff AOL's "GoodMail's CertifiedEmail," a program intended to reduce spam by requiring marketers to pay to ensure email delivery and circumvent spam filters. AOL intents to make a 'white list' of preferred senders. DearAOL's believes the fee amounts to a discriminatory "email tax."

AOL previously offered to waive the fee for nonprofits, which the coalition rebuffed.

After the DearAOL.com Coalition -- 600 organizations running the gamut of advocacy and nonprofit groups -- notified the press of this blocking, AOL cleared the URL from their filters. Among the group's members are MoveOn.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and FreePress.

"Today’s events prove the DearAOL.com Coalition’s point entirely: Left to their own devices, AOL will always put its own self interest ahead of the public interest," said Free Press campaign director Timothy Karr. "AOL wants us to believe they won’t hurt free email when their pay-to-send system is up and running. But if AOL is willing to censor the flow of information to silence their critics, today, how could anyone trust that they will preserve the free and open internet down the road?"

FreePress also released responses from some of the coalition's members who had their emails blocked.

"They obviously stopped blocking the emails with DearAOL.com in them," said Eve Fox, of Washington, D.C. "Their behavior is a perfect example of why Goodmail is such a bad idea. That type of control and interference threatens the inherent democracy of the Internet."

"Whether AOL has modified their errant ways or not, this example of filtering is a powerful reminder of just how dangerous it is to allow large corporate, profit driven entities to manipulate our Internet resources, especially when the public interest competes directly with their own private interests,” group member Seth Hall said.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham told CNET News late Thursday that "AOL e-mails mentioning Dearaol.com would now be delivered as normal."

"We discovered the issue early this morning, and our postmaster and mail operations team started working to identify this software glitch," he remarked.

The DearAOL.com coalition claims to represent 15 million people from 600 member organizations. Some 350,000 Internet users have signed DearAOL.com letters opposing AOL's pay-to-send-email proposal.