You've got (paid) mail

[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff]
[Commentary] America Online may be the country's best-known, and most widely mocked, mass mailer. Every few months the company sends out thousands of promotional CDs, and shortly thereafter most of the shiny plastic discs make their way to nearby landfills -- unless they're converted to beer coasters. So it's kind of funny that AOL is coming under fire these days for the way it plans to handle mass mailings online. At issue is the Time Warner subsidiary's plan to create a priority lane for commercial e-mail. Starting later this month, companies can pay to be added to a certified e-mail delivery system run by an AOL contractor, Goodmail Systems. If they abide by Goodmail's rules for e-mail etiquette, their messages will be delivered straight to AOL users' inboxes, bypassing AOL's spam filters. The freedom and openness of the Net are already under assault from spammers, virus writers and phishers — con artists who try to trick people into revealing Social Security numbers, passwords and other personal information. Most of these offenses are carried out through e-mail because it's free, anonymous and tricky to authenticate. The main drawback to AOL's plan is that it offers mass marketers an easy way to evade spam filters. A better approach is Yahoo's plan to use Goodmail only for "transactional" e-mails, such as messages confirming an online purchase. Even AOL's system, though, will have to answer to the company's subscribers. And if the Goodmail system turns out to be a font of unwanted sales pitches and fundraising pleas, those customers have plenty of other places to take their business.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-aol15mar15,1,3896...
(requires registration)