ISP AOL, which plans to implement e-mail delivery charges for commercial companies (allowing them to bypass its anti-SPAM filter), has agreed that not-for-profit organisations should be exempt:

For small fees ranging from 0.25 of a cent to one cent per message, bulk e-mail senders could bypass AOL's junk mail filters and be sure that their messages get delivered to users.

AOL said the plan would reduce the amount of junk mail that people received because spammers were unlikely to pay the high fees required to get their messages to users.

Those that did not pay would have their e-mail treated as normal and risk it getting stuck in junk filters and marked as spam. Yahoo is also planning a similar service.

Speaking personally, AOL's plan has some merit, yet at the same time it appears to risk more than could be gained. By allowing some messages to deliberately bypass its filter it is legitimising SPAM, at least some of it.

To us this is a truly bizarre notion because your average Internet user simply doesn't want SPAM - ANY OF IT. Allowing certain messages to get through the filter does not solve this problem, it only makes it worse.

AOL's reasoning, that this would reduce the amount of junk received by customers, is also a puzzling one. The ISP already uses filters, so surely legitimising some messages is only going to increase the amount? Unless of course they’re saying that the filters don’t work at all, in which case, why bother paying to get through them? More @ BBC News Online.