Fiasco! AOL Censoring Critics' Mail?

The high drama surrounding AOL's arrangement with Goodmail's CertifiedEmail service was further escalated Thursday after MoveOn.org, one of the company's most brutal critics, announced that AOL had blocked emails containing links to MoveOn's petition site, DearAOL.com.

From the Major Motion Picture Elizabethtown As somebody once said...there's a difference between a failure...and a fiasco. A failure is simply the non-presence of success. Any fool can accomplish failure. But a fiascoA fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions. A fiasco is a folktale told to others... that makes other people feel more alive... because it didn't happen to them.


The event comes on the heels of national uproar over what seemed to be AOL's plan to phase out their free EnhancedWhitelist in favor of Goodmail's fee-based authentication service. AOL was quick to make a subsequent announcement that the EnhancedWhitelist would remain. But reversing what had been the chief selling point for the partnership for the past couple of months. On Wednesday, MoveOn sent out notices to those on its email list pointing out the seeming contradictions and using them as evidence of AOL's loss of trustworthiness. But AOL members were not receiving those messages. Anyone who tried to forward the message on to AOL accounts had their messages bounced back with notice of permanent failure of delivery. MoveOn, who has accused AOL of lying throughout the ordeal, was quick to send out notice: "AOL was caught red-handed censoring email, and now the public knows their credibility is gone," said Adam Green, a spokesperson for MoveOn.org Civic Action. "Think about it. AOL's first reaction was to tell reporters that the DearAOL.com Coalition were spammers, and their second reaction was to unblock our emails. They can't both be true - why would AOL unblock the email of spammers? AOL was caught censoring email, then they were caught lying about our coalition, and in the end AOL proved they cannot be trusted to preserve the free and open Internet." The timing of the blockage is what makes many suspicious of AOL's action - a fact that is either damning or unfortunate. But AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham told Murdok that the problem was the result of a technical glitch during system upgrades, and that technicians were working on the problem long before MoveOn sent them notice. "We noticed it early on Thursday. We were contacted by someone at MoveOn.org around 12:45 and were well on our way to a fix," said Graham. Graham said that at least 50 or 60 websites were affected by the glitch, including DearAOL.com, and called the incident "regrettable." "No medium is going to operate seamlessly every day," said Graham. "We offer our regrets to anyone that's been involved. It involves some very complicated software and hardware. We were able to fix it within 9 hours." The Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, isn't buying that explanation, echoing sentiments from many who believe email blocking often occurs, but the high profile of MoveOn.org brought the issue to light. "The fact is, ISPs like AOL commonly make these kinds of arbitrary decisions - silently banning huge swathes of legitimate mail on the flimsiest of reasons - every day, and no-one hears about it," here.") Drag this to your Bookmarks. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") Yahoo My Web