But a few hours later, Pettycrew wasn't laughing. And neither were the half dozen or so of her friends who used AOL. They never saw her e-mail because the online giant's servers bounced her message at the gate. The reason? According to an automatically generated e-mail that AOL sent to Pettycrew, "the URL contained in your email to AOL members has generated a high volume of complaints."

Pettycrew was both mystified and incensed. "[The video file] was a European car ad," she recalls. In the ad, a shiny new auto, in the sights of a pigeon, raises its hood to smack the bird before it can leave a calling card. "There was nothing vulgar or obscene about it. Since when has AOL assumed a censorship role?"

It's a question that more and more e-mail users may be asking as ISPs call in heavy artillery in the war against spammers. AOL has adopted some particularly aggressive tactics, and users like Pettycrew whose messages have been apprehended by server-level filters--as well as recipients like Pettycrew's friends who find that some of their innocent incoming messages are being snagged--are starting to wonder if the online giant has gone from security guard to thought police.