Opposition to AOL's 'Email Tax' Growing

An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that opposition to AOL's proposed 'Email Tax' that would create a two tier email filtering system is growing. DearAOL.com, representing such organisations as the EFF and Craigslist, has written an open letter to AOL asking them to reconsider. "

Comments

Re:Certified Spam

[DistantShadow]

I think I'd be happy if my ISP implemented this so-called "email tax", provided that it was applied directly to lowering my bill. I pay $50 a month - which is about average for cable broadband in the US (in my experience). Anything that lowers my cost is welcome. Plus, I have *never* used my ISP provided email address, so I'd never see a single piece of certified spam from this endeavor. I don't see a downside.

Now if my ISP were to use this money for purposes other than lowering my bill - or perhaps increasing my speeds - I'd be entirely against this idea.

-ds

Re:If you don't want to pay the "tax", don't!

[tessaiga]

Because AOL will now be able to lower the threshold for spam flagging and increase their false positive rate. Services like electronic bank statements are going to be among the first to be adversely affected, forcing banks and the like to pay the "tax" you mention to continue to offer these services. After all, when Joe Sixpack's electronic statements stop showing up in his inbox, who do you think he's going to call up, AOL or his bank? AOL is counting on it simply being cheaper for companies to cough up money for their fees than to pay for additional customer service reps to educate each caller on the real source of the problem.

Yahoo is already trying to make this tax explicit:

Another major provider, Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo Inc., in the coming months will test an optional certified e-mail program based on "transactional" messages only, such as bank statements and purchase receipts, Yahoo spokeswoman Karen Mahon said.