The current Hustler magazine contains an article by Earthblog.net Content Producer Marc Madow, titled "Access Denied: Internet Freedom in Peril." (It's the April 2007 issue, available now.) One of the subjects of that article is AOL (formerly America Online) and its arrogant assumption of power over the e-mail of its subscribers. And, damned if they didn't prove us right again.

A prominent organization called Downsize DC has been having its e-mail communications with its supporters interfered with by good old AOL. Here is part of an e-mail we received from them describing their dilemma;

DC Downsizers, we've run into a serious problem and we need your help.

During January, we sent some chills down people's spines when I wrote that we had gotten a low level of feedback in response to a particular Dispatch. We got messages from concerned supporters. Was something seriously wrong?

As it turns out, there was. We were working with one arm tied behind our back for most of January.

Last month was a very good month in so many ways.

• We broke our monthly record for messages to Congress.
• We broke the January record for number of newly registered DC Downsizers.
• Compared to the months of 2006, January, 2007 would've been our fourth best month for recruiting new DC Downsizers.
• We achieved our monthly budget of $14,000 in just nine days -- faster than any month last year.

It was a good thing too because right after that, something went wrong. Donor response plummeted. Requests for your feedback (via feedback at DownsizeDC dot org) received a much lower response than normal.

And we started to watch our email subscription list shrink. So far, it has shrunk nearly 7,000. We hadn't been purging closed email addresses from our list for a few months because we were using a new delivery system and just didn't have the feature in place yet. When we turned it on, some shrinkage was expected, but not nearly as much as we actually had.

The last couple of weeks have been a nightmare. Why? Because America Online (AOL) has blacklisted us.

The result, in actual AOL addresses and related fall-out (like through Netscape addresses, which AOL owns as well) has been a loss of roughly 3,000 subscribers. But there's a real possibility the actual damage is closer to 5,000, or possibly even 6,000 subscribers.

On top of that, anyone attempting to sign up with our system using an AOL or AOL-related address couldn't confirm their registration. That means they didn't get subscribed to our list at all.

If we can get this problem fixed, we can re-subscribe those that we lost who were already on the list. We still have their addresses. But the ones that couldn't be confirmed last month, well, they are likely lost forever. In fact, they probably left thinking we were incompetent.

We've been having difficulties with AOL since November. For those who want or need all the details, we explain the relationship and the reason for the blacklist on our blog.

Suffice it to say, it's all AOL's fault, and they haven't been good about fixing their problem.

We will get this fixed. We are determined. And in fact, we're very close to doing so, but for here and now, AOL's problem has caused us one very real difficulty. Imagine what it would mean for your company if thousands of your customers suddenly disappeared. Well, it works the same way for Downsize DC when we can't communicate with our supporters.

The sins already perpetrated by AOL could fill a book. They pioneered the concept of charging e-mail senders with deep pockets an extra fee to guarantee delivery - in other words, to let their junk mail overrule AOL's own spam filter and arrive in your mailbox whether you want it there or not. (Despite protests, they inaugurated this abomination last year.) "E-mail senders can pay to get preferred handling by AOL's mail filters. If you don't pay, your mail gets processed more slowly and --- gee, we're sorry! --- might get tossed as spam. Many, including me, view GoodMail as a form of extortion," wrote web guru Fred Langa.

DearAOL, an activist organization, compares the company to a building superintendent who wants his palm greased or he'll clean out the mailboxes and toss the contents in the incinerator. By refusing to deliver the DearAOL protest group's messages, AOL already proved how efficiently it can keep you from getting mail.

The number of Americans who get their political news online grows every day, and millions of us donate to political causes via electronic transfers. Thanks to software developed by e-activists, we tell the beltway insiders how we feel about every issue on their agendas, even the ones we're not supposed to know about.

Suppose your favorite public-spirited advocacy group agrees to go along with AOL's extortion demands. "Okay, we'll pay the e-mail tax to get our message out." Not so fast! First, your group has to prove a year of business history and half a year of "sound mailing history," and must represent a brand "well regarded by consumers or small businesses." In whose opinion? AOL's, of course.

Fortunately, in the case of Downsize DC an influential journalist intervened and we had the pleasure to receive a follow-up e-mail from them which stated in part;

Good news!

Thanks to the help of Declan McCullagh, uber-pundit of the wired world of cyberpolitics, we got our AOL problem fixed yesterday.

Declan publicized our AOL difficulty to a big audience, resulting in tons of feedback that will help us do better with our email system. We also now have our very own AOL-provided problem-solver! Thank you Declan McCullagh and AOL. All of this means that . . .

Thousands of AOL subscribers are receiving the Downsizer-Dispatch again for the first time in nearly a month. Welcome back all of you!

When speaking of our rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, some people claim that, technically, it's only censorship if it's performed by the government. Not so, say many others, including Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored. "Censorship is any interference with the free flow of information in society."

Corporations are more often the villain than the government. It's part of the job description. In effect, the government tells them, "We'll give you the power to suppress, and you know what kind of stuff we don't like. As long as you're in there, go ahead and suppress the stuff you don't like, too." When the government delegates the job to commercial interests, we're supposed to just accept that second-hand censorship as another aspect of the free market. Only it isn't. It's something more sinister.

The very worst thing about electronic censorship is that, chances are, you will never know it happened. Messages simply quit showing up. Lost and gone without a trace are untold opportunities to resist the abuses of power that affect every aspect of our lives. For instance, the gigantic Telus outfit prevented its Internet customers from learning about a labor dispute, by blocking access to a union's website.

"In a country where more than 40 percent of voters now self-identify as independents, it's no longer a question of whether the Internet will revolutionize American politics, but when," says Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter. But not if the corporations who control the Internet can have their way.

Online activism could even create a viable third-party presidential candidate. That's something to look forward to, and probably the number one reason why net neutrality is worth fighting for. Most likely, it's also the nightmare scenario fueling Washington's paranoid fear of uncensored speech online.

Pat Hartman published 25 issues of the zine Salon: A Journal of Aesthetics and currently is webslave at Virtual Venice.