The FBI defines "labor racketeering" as the domination, manipulation, and control of a labor movement which affects related businesses and industries. This domination may result in the denial of workers' rights and sometimes inflicts economic loss on the worker, business, industry, insurer, or consumer.

Like labor racketeering, this form of digital racketeering is attempting to dominate, manipulate, and control your access to information and the access of others to you. This domination may result in the denial of your rights to get email you want (and service you pay for), it may inflict economic loss on you (for example, if you don't get an electronic bank statement or bill on time), and economic loss on business, industry, and other consumers.

Just to be clear, this fee-to-send structure is not an analog to the postage stamp. Anyone can buy a postage stamp.

Goodmail requires that you have a business history, be in business for at least a year, conduct business from the U.S. or Canada, have a fixed IP address, and pay an "accreditation application processing fee" that regularly runs $399. That's just to be considered to be allowed to send email, before the fees to do the actual sending.

Your mom can buy a single stamp. Not so with Goodmail. The very fact that Goodmail requires a business history separates this from any semblance of a postage stamp analogy -- and from any sense that Goodmail is making mail delivery good or reliable for your desired email messages. Goodmail is designed for commercial email delivery. Period.

Before AOL and Yahoo signed up, programs like those offered by Goodmail were only on the lunatic fringe. Now, however, they're hitting the mainstream with a solution that's nothing but a lose-lose for everyone but Goodmail.

You already know how you're going to lose. You're still going to get unsolicited commercial email. Only, now, AOL and Yahoo are receiving bribes to pass that mail on to you. Don't go thinking that if you use Google's Gmail, you're safe. One of Goodmail's advisors is the product management VP at Google.

You're also going to get unsolicited messages from those who don't bribe your ISP -- they'll just take a little longer to get there. If the senior execs at AOL or Yahoo don't think the power spammers out there aren't going to game the Goodmail system, they're smoking something pretty strong.

You're also going to lose because some mail you want to get might not make it through. Whether it's mail from your mom, your favorite hobby shop, your Little League newsletter, or even from a bank that didn't buckle under the racketeering threat, you might lose mail you've come to count on.

The senders and publishers are going to lose as well, even those who pay the bribes. Email recipients are going to immediately know that mail marked as "AOL Certified E-Mail" is mail that's gotten through because a bribe has been paid and those messages will be immediately consigned to the trash box.

Senders who don't pay the bribes will lose as well, of course. These senders rely on the email system to get messages through to recipients. Let me give you an example. If you buy an online product, often you get a download key via email. If you want to download the item you've bought, and the sender hasn't bribed Goodmail, you might not get your product. How does that help you -- or the seller, who now needs to jump through more hoops to simply get you your product?