AOL Email Tax Fury: 2,000 Recruits Per Hour

A coalition of business, labor, education, left-wing, right-wing, no-wing groups and individuals has awakened to the idea that AOL and Yahoo are trying to charge for extra-good delivery of a new class of “certified” email. They’re really, really mad… and showing it.

When we last checked, the protest letter at DearAOL.com was growing at a rate of 2,000 new signatures per hour.

As we told you a few weeks ago, the ISPs have apparently figured out what the Post Office learned long ago: Delivering junkmail is vastly more profitable than fighting it. The service providers are converting a grinding expense into a new revenue source with explosive potential.

In fact, despite high-falutin’ chatter about the need for insuring delivery of financial documents, within two weeks of the announcement, AOL was pitching its new revenue source to those most likely to drive it: members of the Direct Marketing Associaton.

As opposition mounted, Yahoo’s interest has paled… at least in public. That allowed the heat to focus on AOL.

In addition to Email Battles’ meme, the DearAOL group complains that:

• The CertifiedEmail program would create a two-tiered internet, where the rich get mail delivered for a price, and the rest is bent, spindled and mutilated by content filters.
• The email charge is the beginning of an ever-increasing flood of taxes that will lead to the unravelling of the internet itself.
• Charging well-heeled spammers marketers so they can bypass spam filters doesn’t do a thing to reduce real spam.
• CertifiedEmail actually rewards ISPs for lousy service. If regular email delivery is a slow and uncertain nightmare that constipates a legitimate sender’s mail servers, the sender may be forced to pay the requested blood money just to stay in business.

The lousy delivery service rings true for at least one of the signatories: Craig Newton Newmark. As Email Battles recently documented, the founder of Craigslist has been battling rotten mail servers at major ISPs for months.

In its letter to AOL, the group asks, “And what if other Internet service providers retaliate and start demanding their own ransoms to accept mail from your millions of users?”

Excellent question. Let AOL know how you feel. Sign the letter.

Email Battles Backgrounder:

• AOL Finds Spam Strategy, Loses DomainKeys; Email Battles; 23 February 2006.
• AOL, Yahoo Follow Bill Gates: We Don’t See No Stinkin’ Spam.; Email Battles; 9 February 2006.
• Craigslist Lockout of Hotmail and Yahoo Enters Month 4; Email Battles; 1 March 2006.