> Didn’t condemn server side spam filtering as a concept. What
> they condemned was taking away user choice and awareness.

Call it one man, one vote, brad .. with a report as spam system replacing a ballot box (or even one of those diebold machines with their wonderfully chancy chads). So while you, or I would rather not see Bush in the white house, the man did get some votes, possibly even enough to put him there, given that he's there now.

User choice and awareness does come into play. As I said - most ISPs that filter spam do have an obligation to listen to their users, and to give a fair hearing to email / calls from people whose legitimate email they've blocked. Most ISPs do just that.. we certainly do.

A substantial part of our spam filtering (and AOL's, and yahoo's) is keyed to spam reports from our users.

But giving a fair hearing after blocking means that you do have a right to raise some issues which in your opinion led to the block. Could be a compromised script on a webserver, could be a mailing list that's generating complaints.

The feedback loops that AOL and we (and at least some other large ISPs) provide to bulk senders / ISPs is a way for them to stay on top of any complaints about email that they are sending, or their systems are originating, and to deal with them fast, before the volume of complaints gets high enough to trigger a block.

Just like elections, there's likely to be some dispute about filtering decisions as well, which is where actually listening to complaints about valid email getting blocked comes in. Have any of the people who have been fulminating about aol taxing email actually been blocked by AOL? And if so have they used the contact info - 1-800 number, email addresses etc - at http://postmaster.info.aol.com to contact the AOL postmasters? They are a wonderfully clued and responsive bunch of people, I must say, having met and interacted with most of them over the last several years