Kevin Drum seems think think that AOL and Yahoo’s “Goodmail” system might be a good thing; as reported by the New York Times:

America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.

The Internet companies say that this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services. They also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.

In essence, this will simply create a new class of approved spam that will appear in your mailbox, creating only a nuisance to you, increased costs to businesses you need to hear from (e.g., receipt confirmations from Amazon.com and such firms you deal with), and profits for your web service providers. I see it as little different from the recent push by telecoms to charge Internet companies for bandwidth–just another profit-taking scheme by those who control the highways of the Internet.

It will also violate the Net Neutrality policy that has so far served as well as could be expected on the net. As for the safeguard of only approving email users have “agreed to receive,” that’s highly dubious at best. How will that be verified? What constitutes “agreement”? With AOL and Yahoo set only to profit from wider use, it is doubtful that spammers will often be blocked for abusing this; it is likely that the inclusion of an “opt-out” clause alone will qualify as “approved” spam.

This is not a solution, it’s a business opportunity for AOL and Yahoo to cash in on the spam business at your expense.