Opposition to AOL's 'Email Tax' Growing

An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that opposition to AOL's proposed 'Email Tax' that would create a two tier email filtering system is growing. DearAOL.com, representing such organisations as the EFF and Craigslist, has written an open letter to AOL asking them to reconsider. "

somewhat larger than the article makes it sound...

[cyberbob2010]

"... representing such organisations as the EFF and Craigslist... "

...and Moveon.org and the Gun Owners of America, and Civic Action, and the Cancer Online Resources etc...

In total this coalition has more than 15 million people in it according to USA Today.
BTW, AOL just announced that it is going to be raising its general monthly fee as well. Either they will drop this e-mail tax crap or they will lose those idiots who are still subscribed to their "internet" service

Re:Certified Spam

[SCHecklerX]

Not only that, but it will make providing legitimate mailing lists that happen to have a lot of AOL users on them impossible. I have enough problems with AOL's braindead mail server configurations as it is. Now they want me to also pay them for the privilege to deal with their incompetence??? (I run a small ~250 user mail list *FREE OF CHARGE* for my cycling team, many of whom are AOL users).

Stop complaining.....

[WhiteWolf666]

AOL can do whatever it wants. Just ignore it.

The better response is to make it absolutely, brilliantly clear that your service doesn't support AOL.

Stick a "Doesn't support AOL" banner on your website, put up a link saying, "AOL's mailservers no longer support the advanced technology used by the rest of the industry. Please upgrade to MSN, Yahoo, Gmail, or any of the other, reliable free e-mail providers out there. If you have any questions or concerns please direct them to or ."

Better yet, some one like hotmail or gmail should hop on this train and start a "switch from AOL campaign." What better way to grab users then to scare them off using _valid_ scare tactics?

We don't do business with any AOL users (just checked). The only AOL e-mail I have to deal with is one of our co-worker's private accounts. If he can no longer receive company e-mails, I'll laugh at him.

Hell, even if you do have a billion AOL customers, subscribe to this service for the SHORT-TERM only. Send each and everyone of your customers a nastygram every 2 weeks indicating that you are dropping AOL support, because their "outdated e-mail technology is no longer compatible with the rest of the web." Most people using AOL have had it forever; it won't take much to convince them AOL is ancient. Advise them to switch to an "up and coming" service like Gmail, and they'll switch, at least for your business related e-mails.

A wide variety of companies used to do this with all kinds of services. Internet Explorer, Active X, even AOL and internet access (back when AOL offered nothing but proxys). The key is not where the blame actually lies (AOL's supposed fight with spam), but to instead portray AOL as a white elephant that is no longer keeping up with the times.