Marc Perkel wrote:
As many of you know AOL is contemplating a pay to send email plan.
*trim*
Let's be a bit more precise.
- all 'free' mail has a cost to send or receive, somewhere, born
by somebody, usually as part of an ISP service fee, or staff,
student, organization membership costs. Or something.
TANSTAAFL.
I don't see anything wrong with AOL charging their *users*
whatever they - and their user-community - are comfortable with.
But that is apparently not the 'plan'.
- from your citation:
What is this all about? here's what the Electronic Frontier Foundation
is saying about it.
* Tell AOL To Drop Its Pay-To-Send Email Plan
We're extremely troubled by AOL's plan to introduce a pay-
to-send email system that will guarantee access to AOL customers'
inboxes for senders who pay $0.0025 per mail to escape anti-spam
filters.
AOL users may, or may not, see an increase in 'legitimized'
spam. IF [ any | enough] organizations choose to pay the fee.
Might AOL then also charge the *users* another fee to have the
now-legitimized spam once again filtered?
There is plenty of historical precedent: Micro$oft selling AV
and "security" tools, for example.
Big as AOL is, they might be well-advised to research the
tragedy of HMS Curacoa, 4200 tons of armor steel - which also
got crosswise with something far larger as a result of a poor
judgement call.
The 'smtp community' will sort AOL in due course, and no more
stop or slow down than RMS Queen Mary did.
This time, nobody has to suffer.
Progress, of sorts.
Bill Hacker
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