Wow! According to dearaol.com:
AOL has proposed the adoption of a system called CertifiedEmail, provided by Goodmail Systems. Under this pay-to-send system, affluent mass-emailers who are willing to pay AOL the equivalent of an “email tax” would get to bypass AOL’s spam filters and get guaranteed delivery to the inboxes of AOL customers.
When I first read this, I thought “big deal, AOL sucks anyways”. Thats just my opinion. At heart I want to beleive that AOL is trying to provide a certified mail as a bonus service to their clients. But I paused and thought about it. THIS IS A BIG DEAL! The more I think about it the more I realize how big it is!
This means that in the future it could be possible that if you are an AOL subscriber that is not on the pay-to-send program there is no promise of your emails being sent, or received…. just pause again and think about that. But it does mean that people sending advertisements and do pay for the service will be able to get their commercials to you.
Yes it will be for current AOL subscribers, but now consider how this will begin to affect other major Internet Provider and Email companies. Others who would want to cash in on the monies made. The article goes on to say some of the ramifications could include “The cost of communicating online will skyrocket, as intermediaries attempt to skim a fee from every communication. Paying AOL’s ransom means paying to build a taxation system for the Net.”
What can we do? I myself am signing the petition to express my opinion that I would like AOL to not do this. If you read their blog, you can read this more in depth. They did a really nice job explaining this view.
Unfortunately the group that begin the petition process was MoveOn.org. So now we are throwing politics into this as well. I wonder why? Im thinking that it partially has to do with campaign bulk emails. I always try to follow the money when it comes to politics. I think that this started because they didn’t want to pay the fees to spread their cause.
Comments?
Technorati Tags: aol, spam, email, pay-to-send, email tax
March 8th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
The only upside I can imagine from this becoming a widely accepted practice is the drop off in spam caused by universal use. True spam becomes unprofitable at only a fraction of a cent per message. In fact, I’ve heard that on average, spam conversion rates are as low as 1:250,000. If that’s the case, even 1/10th of a cent per email would make spam unprofitable.