February 25th, 2006
Petition Drive to Stop AOL’s Email Postage
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Readers may recall our earlier story on AOL and Yahoo (AOL will be first) starting email postage services, which will result in email thus postmarked being treated differently, bypassing the spam filters and being labeled “AOL Certified E-mail” in AOL’s case. The liberal political group MoveOn.org started a petition drive on Thursday that asks AOL to halt its plans.
The online petition was emailed to all 3 million MoveOn.org members on Wednesday, Adam Green, spokesman for the political group’s Civic Action unit, said. MoveOn.org members who also subscribed to AOL, a division of Time Warner Inc, were sent the petition last week.
MoveOn.org plans to hold a news conference on Tuesday to unveil a number of organizations that have joined it in opposing AOL’s pay-to-send system, Green said. Those groups include political organizations from the left and the right, nonprofits, businesses and Internet advocacy groups. Source: TechWeb via Yahoo! News
We Say: MoveOn.org targeted AOL because after conversations with both companies, it was discovered Yahoo was more tentative on its plans (reflected in our earlier story, as well). There were many critics when the earlier story first posted. Honestly … I signed the petition. ‘Nuff said?
Dave says:
I was a member of CompuServe when email was a direct cost per byte. If sending or receiving bulk email carried a real cost, we would break spam’s false economic model: the perception that bulk email levies no direct cost to the sender or recipient. AOL is at least partially responsible for that perception by inventing “all-you-can-eat” internet access for the consumer.
Bulk email consumes significant bandwith for the recipient’s ISP, and bandwith is not free. AOL deserves the right to charge everybody that isn’t a de minimis user of their bandwith. It’s too bad that AOL took so long to realize their mistake.
If an organization, even a bona fide non-profit, can’t afford the fee to contact its members, it should reconsider the need for, and value of the message. It’s still a bargain compared to bulk postal mail.
February 27th, 2006 at 8:00 am
Lockergnome's Tech News Watch says:
Don’t Like AOL’s Email Postage Idea?
Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes: You may remember our earlier stories on email postage as well as the petition drive against it. AOL and Yahoo! are both looking into this, but AOL is far ahead. Sometime early yesterday (Thursday), AOL starting bou…
April 17th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
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May 18th, 2006 at 9:54 am