This looks pretty much like what we feared - but a whole lot faster than I thought. Perfectly legitimate email servers being flagged as "spamming sites," not because they violate email etiquette in some way (such as operating as an open relay) but apparently just because they send a lot of email to AOL. "But you can pay AOL a fee and send our users all the email you wish."

I don't necessarily have a problem with pay-to-send, but this is going to become like a privatized postal service, where the postage you pay depends on which postal company you choose, and which company your correspondent chooses, rather than the weight (roughly equivalent to information content) of the letter you send. Such schemes invariably favor the largest corporations: AOL and Yahoo in this case. I'm surprised MSN's Hotmail hasn't jumped on the bandwagon yet. (For a rough parallel, look at the situation with bank ATM surcharges.)