Comment: Email tax faces user backlash

Posted on 13 Apr 2006 at 15:42

Email - one of the key drivers of the digital revolution - is an invaluable tool for companies keeping in touch with customers, but fresh moves from AOL and Yahoo! could mean higher costs for firms and lost email for end users.

The two companies say they'll guarantee access to your inbox for emailers who pay anywhere between 0.25 cents and 1 cent per message - a controversial plan that's being marketed as a way of limiting spam. But what are the likely implications for emailers and recipients, and who will carry the cost for additional checks?

Such priority mails will override the companie'- own spam filters and image-strippers, thus allowing privacy invaders that report back when you look at the email and deliver the mail with a 'certified' notice. In the process, according to some experts, the two firms will treat more of your email as spam, and so some messages you're expecting won't be delivered.

Both Yahoo! and AOL have teamed up with Goodmail for the proposal, but it has drawn widespread criticism from civil rights groups. Even anti-spam campaigners have slammed plans to charge for sending mail.

'There should be no cost for particular services, and email should be free and accessible to all. This will disenfranchise people,' said Richard Cox, chief information officer of anti-spam organisation Spamhaus. 'It won't reduce spam directly. AOL is already good at managing spam issues, and Yahoo! is getting better.'

It's worth noting that Yahoo! is actually in fourth place on Spamhaus' list of global spam miscreants.

'Spam is a real problem demanding real solutions, but taxing the Internet, even if the tax is "voluntary" and even if the money goes to ISPs, isn't one of them,' said Cindy Cohen of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'The best answer is to put more power in the hands of users to control spam filters. Allowing ISPs to auction off access to email boxes and ransom free speech solves nothing.'

AOL has defended the plans, claiming they were never intended as pure spam prevention but were supposed to enhance the Web for people willing to pay for the premium service.

'This is an optional, premium service that mailers have requested. It isn't an attempt to have anyone pay for the email delivery they have come to trust,' said Charles Stiles, AOL Postmaster. 'What's needed is a way to affirmatively say that a message is spam or isn't spam; it's hard to say what is spam, so that leaves only the option of saying that a message is safe.

'Legitimate mailers benefit, ISPs benefit, and recipients benefit. Don't call it a tax; it isn't. Don't criticise its inability to stop spam - it wasn't intended to stop it - but over time it has the potential to reduce it,' says Stiles.

Nevertheless, there's growing antipathy from email newsletter publishers - from parishioners to business communities - who would also have to pay if they wanted direct, unfettered access to inboxes, even if the subscriber has signed up for the service.

Stephen Downes, who publishes the OLDaily email newsletter to the research community, said the moves could cripple not-for-profit publishers, as the minuscule payments would soon mount up.

'I won't be paying money to send out OLDaily; who could afford it' he said.

'I think we need to keep in mind the impact of such proposals on free and non-commercial content, such as this newsletter, and to ask ourselves what the intent is of a strategy that makes free newsletters like mine impossible to deliver.'

The criticism levelled at AOL and Yahoo! hasn't been limited to the idea of having to pay for sending email, but extends to what the companies plan to do with emails that haven't paid up for 'certified' delivery.