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E-Mail Taxation Without Representation

Does Paying to Send Mail Mean It's Not Spam?

By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.com

February 27, 2006

AOL/America Online • AOL Pays $3 Million, Promises to Clean Up Cancellation Process • AOL Settles Florida Fraud Charges • AntiSpyware Group Targets AOL Release As Dangerous • AOL Heads Roll Over Data Leak • AOL Now Free ... Sort Of • AOL Takes More Hits In Press, On Internet • AOL's Problems Worsen as Consumer Complaints Mount • AOL Embarrassed by CNBC Report On Its Business Practices • E-Mail Taxation Without Representation • AOL, Yahoo Planning Postage Charges for Email • AOL Settles With NY, Agrees to Clean Up Cancellation Process • Ohio Settles Lawsuit With AOL • AOL Abandons Broadband • Ohio Latest to Sue AOL • AOL Loses 2 Million Clients, Faces Subpoenas • Class Action Accuses AOL of Double-Billing Scheme • AOL Offers to Settle Federal Charges --- Consumer Complaints • Cancellation Difficulties • Double-billing • "Free" Hours • Unauthorized Charges • Shop-Direct Complaints • Tech Support

The phrase "pennies on the dollar" took on a whole new meaning when AOL and Yahoo both announced their scheme to charge bulk e-mail senders anywhere from $2.50 to $10 for mass mailings, in order to guarantee delivery to their customers.

The move is being touted as a way to block spam, as junk mailers would face higher costs to hawk their wares in users' inboxes.

But critics say the move is a blatant land grab that will merely extract high fees for essentially the same service, meanwhile harming the efforts of advocacy groups that rely on mass e-mail messages to get their information out.

Political action group MoveOn.org calls the new service a "first step down the slippery slope toward dividing the Internet into two classes of users—those who get preferential treatment and those who are left behind."

Monopoly Money

Both AOL and Yahoo are utilizing a third-party service called "CertifiedMail," provided by Mountain View, CA-based software company Goodmail. Goodmail claims that the CertifiedMail system is designed to distinguish genuine e-mails from spam, phisher forgeries, and other junk mail.

"ISPs have been burdened with challenging and costly efforts to filter out bad email, provide a safe inbox for their users, and attempt to satisfy the needs of well-intentioned legitimate senders," Goodmail said in a statement.

"To date, efforts to certify that a message is legitimate and not from a nefarious source posing as a legitimate entity have been unreliable."

The company claims that its system will verify legitimate e-mails and place a "trust symbol" stamp on the message to ensure it gets to the appropriate recipient -- once the fee is paid.

The Goodmail system operates through "token authentication," imprinting a stamp on the e-mail from its point of origin and checking for it in order to send it directly to the recipient's inbox. Without the Goodmail token, the company doesn't guarantee that the e-mail will reach the recipient, perhaps instead ending up in their spam filter ... or not reaching them at all.

Critics charge that this will not stop phishing e-mails, which are specifically designed to mimic messages from legitimate institutions.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which opposes the Goodmail system, said that "Spoofing the appearance of Goodmail certification to end users should not be much of a problem, and all of the encryption in the world won't fix that."

There is also the question of monopoly, collusion, price gouging and even corporate censorship.

Since AOL and Yahoo are both using the same company for their solution, the company has no incentive to keep prices low against competition. Although Goodmail has promised to discount pricing of its services for non-profit groups, that discount may only exist for a limited time.

Eric Thomas, founder of the L-Soft mailing list management system, said that Goodmail's control of the new system would grant them leave to "to censor senders, with or without reason."

"At the press of a button, Goodmail could put companies out of business by blocking their access to AOL," Thomas said in a press release. "People would have no option but to pay up – and keep their voices down."

"Pay To Send"

The "pay to send" system has roused a chorus of opposition across the political spectrum, with groups as diametrically opposed as MoveOn.org and RightMarch.com joining the EFF and other nonprofit and business groups to challenge the new system.

"Fully ONE-THIRD of our members have AOL or Yahoo email addresses. That means hundreds of thousands of patriotic conservative Americans won't receive our Action Alerts unless we pay a "fee" to their ISPs to guarantee delivery," RightMarch.com said in a press restatement. "We're a grassroots organization. We don't have that kind of money."

For its part, AOL has insisted that the new system won't take the place of its "whitelists," which mass mailers use as the principal vehicle to deliver information to subscribers, and that the chief purpose of the Certified MailSystem is to protect the "sanctity of the e-mail experience."

AOL Postmaster Charles Stiles has gotten into debates on several online forums about the issue, stating that "There is a tremendous amount of misinformation floating around about CertifiedEmail and the implications of such a program… We are working diligently to set the record straight and provide the information people need to better understand this program."

Not all Web denizens are opposed to the plan. Joe W., a software architect from Alexandria, VA, sees the "pay to send" system as a perfect way to stem the tide of spam e-mails that continue to flood e-mail inboxes.

"The huge spam problem we have today arises from the fact that it is completely free to send e-mail regardless of whether the recipients want it or not," he said. "Requiring a "stamp" of a penny per e-mail immediately removes the financial incentive for spammers; while a penny doesn't sound like much to most of us, a spammer sending 1 million emails would be socked with a $10,000 bill."

Whether that would deter spammers is open to question; as long as consumers fall for email spams, they will continue to exist, consumer advocates note. The Goodmail system may simply raise the price of admission, cutting out the amateurs and leaving an open field for slicker, better-financed operators.

EFF's Cindy Cohn was less charitable. "Once a pay-to-speak system like this gets going, it will be increasingly difficult for people who don't pay to get their mail through. The system has no way to distinguish between ordinary mail and bulk mail, spam and non-spam, personal and commercial mail. It just gives preference to people who pay."

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