Online Email Tax Coming from AOL
DEAR AOL
(sign up!)
A variety of interest groups have joined
forces to fight a proposed bulk e-mailing fee they claim strikes at the heart
of online communication a level playing field for rich and poor. America Online
plans to introduce a service that would charge businesses and other bulk e-mailers
a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox without first passing
through junk mail filters. Yahoo has announced similar plans. “The creativity
and ingenuity that have driven the Internet have always relied on an open platform
where the haves and have-nots get treated equally,” said Eli Pariser, executive
director of MoveOn.org Civic Action. “This e-mail tax system is a big step
toward dismantling that system.” The alliance protesting the move includes
liberal activist group MoveOn, the U.S. Humane Society, labor and environmental
groups and online medical communities. It also encompasses conservative political
groups that rely heavily on e-mail lists, said MoveOn spokesman Trevor Fitzgibbon.
…
Diverse Groups
Team Up to Fight Bulk E-Mail Fee Proposed by AOL, Yahoo
Even the Association of Cancer Online Resources is against what
AOL and Yahoo! want to do. Charge to deliver emails, with those companies and
organizations paying the fee automatically getting through the spam filters.
Matt Stoller says it will “destroy online organizing.”
Read more here.
Matt is right, it's a “political tollbooth,” but I'd even call it
an information tollbooth, which is against everything the Internet stands for
and I should know. I've been on the Web for almost 10 years, longer than most
people. Stopping information in the name of commerce is perverted. But it gets
worse. If you doubt me, read
on.
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