Is The Pro-Democracy Movement Under Attack From AOL?
By Winter Patriot on 8/19/2005, 5:43pm PT  

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Hot on the heels of a recent item about Comcast [and other ISPs] blocking email containing the address of Cindy Sheehan's website, I have received a report from US Count Votes saying that that they are no longer able to reach AOL customers via email.

UPDATE: Since this item has been posted I have received more specific information. The email that is being blocked comes from the Announcements List at US Count Votes, a.k.a. election@uscountvotes.org. According to our source,

AOL blocked it once and an AOL customer got it unblocked but then it was blocked again very shortly and has stayed blocked.

AOL technical support could easily look at any email from our announcements list to see that it is a legitimate list that tells how to unsubscribe from it at the bottom of every email from our list, so there is no excuse for blocking it, even once.

If this report is true, then it should not be too hard to fix. I can think of a few useful things you might consider doing.

Fast Symptomatic Relief:
If you are an AOL subscriber, you want to set up an additional email account. Hotmail and gmail come to mind; both are free and both allow you to access your account easily from any browser. No doubt there are other options, perhaps better options. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment for us below. Once you have your account set up, you can visit US Count Votes and ask to have your new address added to their mailing list.

Treating The Cause Rather Than The Symptoms:
Then there's the tried and tested method: Make Some Noise. We've already seen the sort of impact 6 or 7 people can make. If you are an AOL user, and if you are on the US Count Votes mailing list, and if you haven't heard from US Count Votes in a while, then AOL definitely needs to hear from you. As always, please remember to be polite; nobody wants to help an abusive caller. But please also be firm and persistent: we all know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

I regret that I haven't more time to spend investigating this issue. Please use the comments thread below to post any relevant information you happen to have. I will update this post with AOL contact info as soon as I can find some. It you have such info and wish to share it, please do so via the comments, or send me e-mail here: wp112263 at hotmail dot com.

Ah, the old 6-or-7 routine! Thanks to you, the blogosphere is working ... for all of us.

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