Pay to send email...

[Seth Gordon]

If I understand the linked-to article correctly, it's not so much "pay 
to send email" as "pay to be exempt from spam-filtering".

So by instituting this service, AOL is absolving itself of any 
responsibility to improve their content-based spam-filtering service. 
Imagine a dialogue between an AOL customer and tech support:

"My cousin says he keeps sending me emails with pictures of his 
children, and I never get them."

"Oh, they must have been caught by the spam filter."

"But he's not sending me spam!"

"Well, then, for a small fee,..."

I wonder how many customers in this situation will convince their 
correspondents to cough up and how many will ditch AOL.  I'm also 
wondering if AOL did a cost/benefit calculation: "We're going to lose $X 
in revenue from customers who drop AOL, but it would cost $Y to improve 
our automated spam filtering to keep them happy..."