AOL Won't Budge on Email Tax

deman1985 writes "InformationWeek reports that AOL has no intentions to budge on its use of certified email. The company today released a statement apparently in response to the vast amounts of criticism over the past week from consumers and various organizations. From the article: 'We believe more choices, and more alternatives, for safety and e-mail authentication is a good thing for the Internet, not bad,' said an AOL spokesman. 'Everything that AOL has in place today free for e-mail senders remains -- and will only improve.' The programs critics aren't so optimistic, but that doesn't seem to be hampering the company's plans. In a quote that could only be labeled short and sweet, AOL announced, 'Implementation of this timely and necessary safety and security measure for our members takes place in the next 30 days. Mark it on your calendars.'"

Comments

30 days in the hole

[digitaldc]

In a quote that could only be labeled short and sweet, AOL announced, 'Implementation of this timely and necessary safety and security measure for our members takes place in the next 30 days. Mark it on your calendars.'"

I tried to mark it down on my Calendar, but an infected file from my AOL spam disabled it.

Re:might seem a little aloof

[CyricZ]

You obviously misunderstood the point. It is not about a direct comparison between American internment camps and spammers being able to buy their spam into peoples' inboxes.

It's a matter of taking some action to remedy a situation, only to have it backfire and cause numerous more problems than it was originally intended to solve.

What I don't think you realize is that both the free democracy and the free market have failed, for what might be considered the very same reasons: monopoly and oligopoly. A republic does not do well when one must basically choose between two choices, both of which are extremely similar and financially backed by corporations and the wealthy. Likewise, a free market fails when oligopoly and monopoly become the standard. Regardless, the failure is the same: a lack of true choice, and a lack of true competition.