The Register has the goods on the purchase of Weblogs.com from Dave Winer - this is the ping service, not the content provider that AOL bought this week. What it looks like we'll see is some form of QOS added for a fee:

VeriSign has promised that the basic ping service will remain free, but "over time, we plan to offer value-added services... in much the same way companies like Yahoo! provide basic email services for free, and offer premium 'upgrades' for a fee."

The company then went on to discuss the problem of splogs and what could be done with them. "This problem is fraught with many of the same problems that plague the email world in its struggle against spam: Who is the source? What is the content about? Is it a copy?... However, at the infrastructure level, very little is currently being done, and there are remedies that can be deployed that will provide significant, if not thorough relief."

I can't see any way to justify the cost of running a ping service unless you charge for QOS somehow - I'd guess that the splog filtering will be a pay service.