Some statements by Carl Hutzler from AOL, on his blog -
http://carlhutzler.com/blog/?p=6
http://carlhutzler.com/blog/?p=9

And of course several discussions at circleid - including
http://www.circleid.com/posts/future_of_some_email_may_not_use_email/

I do wish you'd stop pushing the blackmail meme. It is not blackmail, or an email tax, as you do seem to acknowledge in that circleid discussion.

There are lots of other ways for bulk mailers to stay on aol's enhanced whitelist, and their regular whitelist as well (such as - dont generate complaints from aol users .. simple, I think?)

Goodmail is going to be targeted at a small segment of emailers who deliver very high value content that is already solicited by the recipients - bank statements, air tickets, online purchase invoices etc.

Their price points are all aligned that way and it is those mailers who would find it most useful to have email displayed in the aol user's inbox with all images displayed, instead of having to click a button to display images [and well, thunderbird doesnt display images by default either - is that blackmail, or an email tax?]

A lot of the EFF response so far has been based on extremely bad data, most of it appears to have been released by other reputation vendors' - that is, goodmail's competitors - PR channels, and some even more distorted versions of the whole thing that have appeared on the website of the direct marketing association, and dmnews.com - again a marketing newsletter.

This is not going to affect person to person mail

It wont even affect the typical political email campaign, whether its left or right wing .. as long as the recipients of those emails actually asked for and signed up to those emails.

Well, I'll stop here. I've already pointed this out on various posts. But is there any problem at all with you, or Danny, actually calling Carl Hutzler or Charles Stiles at AOL and talking to them about these issues?

I'd suggest you or Danny - people with technical clue. Not Cindy, or anybody from moveon.org - I wouldnt trust them to overcome their basic belief that this is all a right wing plot, enough to listen to facts with an open mind.