The online civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with political group MoveOn.org Civil Action, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, labor union AFL-CIO, and the Democratic National Committee, among others, have signed an online petition asking AOL to reconsider its plan.

Despite the backlash, AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said the company will move ahead with its certification plan in the next 30 days. "Mark it on your calendars," he said.

AOL last month announced that it would begin ensuring delivery, with links enabled and images intact, to marketers certified by Goodmail, which charges a per-message fee.

AOL's Graham says the Goodmail certification is entirely voluntary, and that e-mail will continue to be delivered regardless of whether senders seek certification. AOL's users already can ensure delivery of a particular sender's e-mail, either by replying to it--which alerts AOL's spam filters that the sender is not a spammer--or by adding the sender to their address books, Graham said.

But the EFF and other groups say that much legitimate e-mail currently doesn't get through, because spam filters already wrongly identify wanted e-mail as spam. With this deal, they charge, AOL now has a financial incentive to let those false-positives continue--and even proliferate--in hopes that senders will start paying for guaranteed delivery.

In a Tuesday afternoon conference call with reporters, Danny O'Brien at the EFF charged that the Goodmail deal gives a "very perverse incentive to AOL," because it rewards AOL financially "for degrading free email for regular customers."

Gilles Frydman, founder of the nonprofit health information group Cancer Online, added that his organization fears that a two-tiered system for e-mail delivery--one free and one paid--will inevitably result in a degradation of the free system.

Timothy Karr of Free Press added: "The flow of online information, innovation and ideas is not a luxury to be sold off to the highest bidders."

AOL's Graham dismissed such concerns as "misguided and inaccurate." "We have a very long and distinguished track record when it comes to protecting the e-mail integrity of our members," he said.

Yahoo will soon began testing a similar program using Goodmail, but will limit the program to "transactional" e-mail messages, such as bank statements, said Yahoo spokeswoman Karen Mahon. Microsoft already uses Bonded Sender, a program of Goodmail competitor Return Path, for anti-spam authentication, but Bonded Sender charges a flat fee, as opposed to a charge for each e-mail sent.

This news story is important. I recommend that everyone read it.