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AOL last week spurred a ruckus in the e-mail marketing industry when it rolled out a new version of its AOL.com and AIM.com free e-mail services that automatically block images by default.

First the Email Experience Council issued a report saying that the services were blocking all images by default. Then deliverability concern Return Path issued a report saying that according to its tests, the services were blocking images only for new subscribers.

So which is it, and what does it all mean to you?

Sarah Matin, a spokeswoman for AOL tried to get a representative on the phone this morning, but was unsuccessful.

However, she e-mailed this newsletter the following statement:

“All AOL e-mail users accessing e-mail through the enhanced AOL Web Mail service released on [May 22] will note that images from unknown senders are blocked,” she wrote. “E-mail from addresses listed in your address book or sent as certified mail (or via other approved ways) are considered e-mail from ‘known senders’ and may contain live images or links.”

AOL’s move is part of an industry-wide trend in which e-mail inbox providers, such as Yahoo! and Microsoft, are turning images off by default in their newly designed e-mail interfaces. The move is aimed at guarding against spam, viruses and malware.

As a result of this trend, marketers have witnessed their open rates decline steadily over the last several years.

The reason: An e-mail is recorded as having been opened when the receiving computer calls for images from the sending machine. As a result, an e-mail with blocked graphics can be opened and not register as such. Likewise, an e-mail displayed in a preview pain with graphics activated will register as having been opened when the user may have spent just enough time on it to delete it.

However, most e-mail executives are saying AOL’s latest move toward blocking graphics by default in its Webmail interfaces is nothing to get all that worked up about.

“We still believe the effect will be minimal for many mailers,” said Return Path in a statement on its Web site. “AOL does not publicize statistics for use of Webmail versus AOL 9.0, but historically consumer data has shown it to be low. This has probably changed since AOL started offering free accounts, but not likely to the point that it would tip the numbers significantly, especially for very large mailers. The individual composition of your list will be the determining factor.”

Rick Buck, director of privacy and ISP relations for e-mail service provider e-Dialog, said of the change: “Who cares? If you’re an existing mailer and you’ve been doing the right thing and optimizing for AOL all along, then this is just another day in the life. For existing clients, we’ve been optimizing for this all along.”

He added: “If you’re a new mailer, AOL and everybody else has made it more challenging to start up, but it’s not necessarily a bad challenge.”

Also, many e-mail executives believe that e-mail recipients are much more educated about the channel than many mailers think, and that users know how to turn images on for marketers whose graphics they’d like to view.

“People have gotten more and more savvy over the years about e-mail, because they’re more comfortable with computers,” Buck said.