Unless you sleep under a rock, you’ve heard that AOL and Yahoo have decided to open their very own postal service for spammers. Pony up half a penny per message and you, too, can send unwanted email with guaranteed delivery that bypasses spam filters.

Yahoo’s Antispam Product Manager Miles Libbey claims the Goodmail service is aimed at de-phishing transactional messages, like financial docs. As an apparent afterthought, Libbey muses, “We need to ensure that the spammers don’t sign up for the service.” (Who’s a spammer? Anybody who doesn’t buy the service.)

AOL’s chief web strategist Barry Appelman agrees. He’s convinced himself that adding a new revenue source will somehow magically “widen the gap between the amount of good email we want our users to get and the dwindling amount of bad email they might get.” (Huh?)

Government is giddy, too. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) SpokesModel Dave Evans thinks businesses forced to spend real money to email will clean up their lists, and be less inclined to spew junkmail. Forgive him. Bureaucrats appreciate any charge that smells like it may eventually lead to taxes.

And they all have Microsoft Kingpin Bill Gates at their back. Remember that email postage nonsense he proposed at the World Economic Forum back in 2004?

Back on Planet Earth, it’s painfully clear that AOL and Yahoo have figured out what the Post Office learned long ago: Delivering junkmail is vastly more profitable than fighting it. The service providers are converting a grinding expense into a new revenue source with explosive potential.

Will they get away with it? Probably. And in the process, they’ll help Bill prove-up on his other brilliant insight at the WEF: “Two years from now, spam will be solved.”

Exactly. It’s been re-classified.