This is how this world ends. [Don't worry that I am thinking like this this Sunday morning - blame the halfcaff.] But how nice of the free market to solve the problem I am having with spam virus free emailing. See, it must be a problem because it lacks something...payment to the overlords who rule the routers and other bits of backbone:

Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers. America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.

So, are we smart enough to create a parallel free open source internet where corporate interests do not interfere? That would be so 1994.