[e-privacy] EFFector 19.14: AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents

[Nomen Nescio]

Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 16:38:59 -0500 (CDT)
From: EFFector list <editor at eff.org>
Subject: EFFector 19.14: AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents

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* AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents

Blocked Delivery Emails Mentioning www.DearAOL.com

San Francisco - This week, AOL blocked delivery to AOL 
customers of all emails that include a link to 
www.DearAOL.com. Over 100 people who signed a petition to 
AOL tried sending messages to their AOL-using friends, and 
received a bounce-back message informing them that their 
email "failed permanently."

"The fact is, ISPs like AOL commonly make these kinds of 
arbitrary decisions every day - silently banning huge 
swathes of legitimate mail on the flimsiest of reasons - 
and no one hears about it," said Danny O'Brien, Activism 
Coordinator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).  
"AOL's planned CertifiedEmail system would let it profit 
from this power by offering to charge legitimate mailers to 
bypass these malfunctioning filters."

After the original version of this press release was sent 
out Thursday afternoon, AOL stopped blocking email with 
links to www.DearAOL.com.  This incident only increases our 
worry about organizations that don't have the ability to 
seek instant press attention.  The next time AOL's anti-spam 
filters fail for a small organization - or one without 
political muscle - will they move so quickly to fix them? 
Or will they push organizations to just sign up with 
Goodmail and pay to avoid the problem?

When reports of undelivered email started rolling in to the 
DearAOL.com Coalition, MoveOn co-founder Wes Boyd decided to 
see for himself if it was true.

"I tried to email my brother-in-law about DearAOL.com, and 
AOL sent me a response as if he had disappeared," said Boyd.  
"But when I sent him an email without the DearAOL.com link, 
it went right through."

While AOL may imply that censoring www.DearAOL.com is part 
of some anti-spam effort, its own customers are witnessing 
how faulty AOL's spam measures would be if that were the 
case.

"I forwarded www.DearAOL.com to my own AOL account and it 
was censored.  Apparently I can't even tell myself about 
it," said Kelly Tessitore from Framingham, Massachusetts.

"This proves 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 in a free and open 
Internet," said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free 
Press, a national, nonpartisan organization working on media 
reform and Internet policy issues.  "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 now to silence their critics, how could anyone 
trust that they will preserve the free and open Internet 
down the road?  Their days of saying 'trust us' are over - 
their credibility is zero, zip, nada."

The DearAOL.com Coalition represents over 15 million people 
combined - and has grown from 50 member organizations to 
600 in a month.  Since the beginning of the DearAOL.com 
campaign, more than 350,000 Internet users have signed 
letters to AOL opposing its pay to send proposal.  Coalition 
members include craigslist founder Craig Newmark, the 
Association of Cancer Online Resources, EFF, Free Press, the 
AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org Civic Action, Gun Owners of America, and 
others.

For more on the issues surrounding pay-to-send email, join 
EFF for a debate on April 20 in San Francisco.  EFF's 
O'Brien and tech expert Esther Dyson will face off over the 
question "Email -- Should the Sender Pay?" Entrepreneur and 
EFF cofounder Mitch Kapor will moderate.

More information about the DearAOL.com Coalition:
<http://www.dearaol.com/>

More information on next week's debate:
<http://www.eff.org/bayff/aolmail_debate.php>

For the initial press release:
<http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_04.php#004556>

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