Ryan's Journal

About a year ago, the net was erupting with fury over AOL's potential decision to fundamentally alter the way they dealt with email by shirking any responsibility for spam control onto a certification system, where "certification" really means "sender paid to send." Instead of dealing with spam at the technical level while society hunts for a solution, they could arbitrarily throw away uncertified mail, a protection racket of sorts to get the rest of the world to play and pay along. This means little to me since I can only locate one address in my books that's @aol.com - but still.

Now it's a year later. AOL quietly flipped the switch on their system last May. The opposition's organizing force stopped blogging more than half a year go, right after announcing the failure of their most basic goal. Technorati shows no "dearaol" tags for almost ten months.

I know DearAOL isn't the end all and be all of its cause, but it's interesting that AOL simply ignored its way straight through any opposition and landed - wherever it is today. So what's the scoop? Is AOL losing normal mail? How many people are now playing along with the Goodmail certification system? Did I miss the apocalypse?

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