After reading the article, I feel like the Acceptable Ads program is a little more complicated than the "extortion" some are calling it. The tiered scheme where "small websites" can apply for free and only "larger properties" pay seems like it could be a reasonable way of dealing with the financial overhead of maintaining the list if it's run fairly and transparently; that transparency seems to be lacking at the moment, but that may be changing soon ("We’re inviting a completely independent review board to take over, enforce and oversee our Acceptable Ads initiative").