Have these people not heard of PRIVACY?

I was listening to NPR this afternoon, and this article came up about how AOL and Yahoo! are going to be registering companies as "legitimate" advertisers and "certifying" emails.

Part of me thinks, "This is like that email postage thing that Microsoft suggested several years ago, but actually with MONEY instead of with bandwidth."
Part of me thinks, "I can't believe people who PAY for AOL access are now going to be sold to advertisers. Wow, I'm glad I'm not an AOL user. Although I am a Yahoo! user for my "spam" email account, so I guess that makes me either the pot or the kettle, eh?"
And then there's the last part that thinks, "Well, isn't Google doing this in their own way anyway?"