AOL Won't Budge on Email Tax

deman1985 writes "InformationWeek reports that AOL has no intentions to budge on its use of certified email. The company today released a statement apparently in response to the vast amounts of criticism over the past week from consumers and various organizations. From the article: 'We believe more choices, and more alternatives, for safety and e-mail authentication is a good thing for the Internet, not bad,' said an AOL spokesman. 'Everything that AOL has in place today free for e-mail senders remains -- and will only improve.' The programs critics aren't so optimistic, but that doesn't seem to be hampering the company's plans. In a quote that could only be labeled short and sweet, AOL announced, 'Implementation of this timely and necessary safety and security measure for our members takes place in the next 30 days. Mark it on your calendars.'"

Balderdash

[Dekortage]

"Balderdash and piffle," replies Jennings. "Nothing's really changed."

First: piffle [google.com] means balderdash, doesn't it? What a bunch of tomfoolery and flimflam.

Second: sorry Jennings, something has changed. The FTC's CAN-SPAM law [ftc.gov], debated though they may be, allow that unsolicited e-mail can be sent LEGITIMATELY under certain strict guidelines. AOL's e-mail "tax" will potentially damage the ability of legitimate law-abiding businesses to legally market their products.

Third: what is AOL's definition of spam? What does this mean for nonprofits who legitimately send mass e-mails? What about politicians who spam [slashdot.org] -- will AOL let that through, or not?

Re:Of course a mass-mailing organization opposes i

[Confused]

The question would be whether AOL plays nicely. If they have a non-profit rate, does that mean that they WILL absolutely demand their inch of green?

I really hope, AOL will charge those non-profit organisations the same as other businesses. Why should televangelists, corrupt political parties or other assorted whiny do-gooder have it easier to get to me? If a company tries to sell used condoms or recycled viagra, at least it tries to be productive.

Re:Open-letter petition to AOL

[Eric Smith]

I don't think a petition is going to impress them, but a boycott might. If they want to isolate themselves from the rest of the email world, let them. We should all configure our MTAs (Sendmail, Postfix, etc.) to refuse to deliver ANY email to AOL hosts. When AOL customers can't get email from outside AOL, they will switch to a more enlightened ISP.

I'm actually in favor of using micropayments [brouhaha.com] to solve the spam problem, but the micropayments should go to the actual email recipient, not the ISP or some other company. Obviously part of it would be consumed by processing expenses, but there could be competing clearinghouses. And use of the system would be completely by discretion of the email recipient, NOT the ISP.

Re:User whitelist

[dtumd]

aol users' whitelists will have very little effect on this. A lot of email to aol is blocked before it actually reaches a user's email account (and all the settings associated with it). an example is stated earlier in these posts, which is that AOL has a certain unannounced threshold, that if a particular domain sends a certain number of emails to them within a certain amount of time, they automatically get blocked for a certain amount of time. No user whitelist will have any effect on this as the emails are blocked too early on their route. companies that pay aol will probably be able to bypass such restrictions.

Everybody is missing the point of this service...

[Otto]

Here's the thing... for most people that this will actually impact, it will simply make it harder for AOL users to use whatever your service is.

AND THAT'S THE GOAL.

AOL has fallen on hard times recently. The "walled garden" isn't holding the users in like it used to. AOL users have come to consider that AOL = the internet, for the most part, and lots of them are using AOL as a more normal, but particularly expensive and annoying, ISP.

But that's not retaining existing customers. Once an AOL user finds out that signing up with a more traditional ISP is not only cheaper, but actually provides a far better service, then they tend to switch. AOL subscriber numbers have been dropping for ages now.

AOL wants to stop, or at least slow, that. And that's why they are going to this service. By degrading the rest of the internet to their users, they hope to make their walled garden seem better by comparison. If AOLers have problems with the internet services delivering email to them, then they will tend to blame the service itself, not AOL.

People complaining that this will make things harder for them are missing the point. It's supposed to make things harder for you. Hard enough to make you give up on supporting AOL users. This gives AOLers a bad impression of the rest of the network and keeps them in their walled garden.