AOL pay-to-send e-mail proposal...ANYONE HEARD OF THIS BEFORE?

[regnaD kciN]

I just got the following from MoveOn.

Stop AOL's e-mail tax

AOL wants to charge an "email tax" for sending email.

Those who pay-to-send would get preferential treatment, while those who don't would risk their emails not being delivered. AOL is threatening the existence of the Internet as we know it. Can you help change AOL's mind by signing this emergency petition?

http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax

This sounds outrageous, but I can't recall seeing any threads about it here. Has anyone heard of this before now? Is it genuine? This does look like it really comes from MoveOn, but I suppose it could be a faked site. Any confirmation would be welcome.

[Initech]

1. Is nothing free in this country anymore?

:argh:

[wakeme2008]

2. It is for Bulk emailers not normal ppl

But the Moveon get caught up in it. So would the RNC.

[meganmonkey]

3. Why the hell would anyone use AOL anyway?

:shrug:

[Stephanie]

4. yes it's true

it was in the news a few weeks ago -

[democrat_patriot]

5. So....stop using crappy AOL.

problem solved.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

6. Bill Gates got all giddy over this idea a while back...

...like a "cyber postage stamp" on every e-mail you send. He ran it up the flagpole, no one saluted. Now AOL's apparently excited. Whoopee.

[Warpy]

7. It's mostly aimed at bulk emailers

like advertisers, but would catch political mailing lists, too. The theory is that the mailer pays from an exemption from the AOHELL spam filter so that the bulk mail is delivered. I don't know if they have any safeguards in place that would prevent spammers from simply paying for the exemption. I do know it would probably place a burden on nonprofit organizations that would either have to cough up or risk having their mail trapped as spam.

As far as I know, it doesn't affect ordinary subscribers.

[northzax]

10. well frankly, I get a lot of spam from non-profits as well

it's not as annoying, but it is unsolicited. and under the system I could approve an entire domain, like Moveon.com to send me mail without the fee.

[northzax]

8. no, it's not that outrageous

the idea is that you pay a half cent fee to send an unsolicited email and get it past the junk mail filters. Otherwise anything that would normally end up in the junk mail box (at the level classified by the user) will still end up in the junk mail filter and anything that would normally get through will still get through.

I don't have AOL, but here's a rough cut at what would happen: If I have you on my approved list, you don't pay. If you send me an email where I am on a laundry list of recipients and I have not approved you, it will go into the deep junk pile. If it is addressed just to me, it gets through to the level I request. If you really want to send me a penis enlargement ad, you will pay a half cent to do it. It is intended to cut down on the amount of spam that clogs AOL and other's email systems.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

9. It is for bulk emails, and I still don't understand necessarily what the

problem with it is. I'll keep my mind open though.

It seems from what I'd known so far that these would've been trapped by a spam filter anyway, so those that don't pay the fee are no worse off than previously I think.

[regnaD kciN]

13. Here's a possible problem...

...not all "bulk e-mails" are business spam going out to millions of recipients.

Over the past four years, I produced and directed one feature and one short film. In each case, I had Pegasus create a group for the actors and one for the crew, so I could e-mail them with important information (changes for the next weekend's shoot, say, or post-production status reports) without having to write the same e-mail to each one of them. The cast list might have twenty or so people, the crew list maybe seven to twelve. But, from what it sounds like here, I might wind up having to pay AOL to make sure those letters made it to my collaborators. That's simply not acceptable to me.

[MountainLaurel]

14. Similarly

When a friend of mine was in Japan for a year working, on several occasions when he would try to send a message to more than five or six people at once, as he would do with Christmas messages or "if you heard about that earthquake, I'm OK" mail, they were marked as spam. At least twice when he was trying to send photos, his account was shut down for "spamming."

[Options Remain]

11. IF YOU CANT STOP SPAM.... CASH IN

pay for spam services go figure.

[ismnotwasm]

12. I got that from Moveon today

And forwarded it. I think the idea behind the protest is more of a "slippery slope" idea of the internet being the last "free" frontier and all that. (Not that it really is) I signed it because AOL pisses me off in general. Bad reason, I know. But I got to tell them off in the comment box and tell them to quit sending me those stupid "please come back" CD's. I haven't had AOL in a long time, you'd think they'd quite wasting money.