May I have permission to forward this to another list owner on my lists?
Elizabeth Mann
At 02:54 PM 2/2/2006, Eric Thomas said.
>L-Soft has joined the growing number of companies that protest against
>AOL's recent announcement that it will phase out its Enhanced Whitelist
>service in June in favour of Goodmail CertifiedEmail, which carries an as
>yet unspecified per-message fee. In a nutshell, companies like L-Soft get
>on the AOL whitelist by following good e-mail practices, such as cleaning
>up dead addresses, making it easy for people to leave mailing lists, and
>of course not sending any spam. This is all going to be thrown out the
>window and replaced with the payment of hard currency to Goodmail. People
>who can afford to pay this fee will have the privilege of reaching AOL
>subscribers, others will end up in junk folders. Yahoo is expected to
>follow down the same path.
>
>I have nothing against certification as an additional tool in the fight
>against spam. Knowing that message such and such genuinely comes from its
>purported sender can help improve the accuracy of your spam filter. I
>also understand that certification costs money, unless sponsored by the
>government or by volunteers donating their time to the cause. But I think
>per-message certification fees make as much sense as per-click SSL
>certificate fees. I also find that the "rumoured" rates that have been
>mentioned in some of the press articles are totally out of proportion
>with the service being provided. The fee is several times what providers
>currently charge for the service of hosting the mailing list, removing
>dead addresses, making backups, etc. As an illustration, a typical hobby
>list would cost on the order of $500-1000 a year. An active list could
>cost $10k or more a year. This may not be much for the advertisement
>manager of a large company, not when compared to print adverts, but what
>about the rest of us? I know L-Soft hosting customers cannot afford the
>price increase that would be necessary to cover an identification fee of
>five figures PER DAY.
>
>And for many of us, this identification fee is not even an option. To be
>eligible for Goodmail accreditation, you must "have business headquarters
>located in the United States or Canada." Foreigners need not bother. You
>must also "have at least a 6 month mailing history from [the] IP" address
>from which you are sending your newsletter. This of course makes it very
>difficult to switch ISPs if you are not satisfied with the one you are
>using. A new ISP means a new IP address, and Goodmail will then shut you
>down for "at least 6 months." A nice 'protection' plan for the ISP, but a
>disaster for customers.
>
>Anyway, here is a link to our full press release, which has been sent to
>major publications today. And I want to salute the courage of the
>executives at hosting-only companies that have spoken up and protested,
>knowing full well that they would go out of business in a matter of
>months were their access to AOL and Yahoo mailboxes to be cut off in
>retaliation. In the post-Enron era, this kind of corporate courage is
>very rare indeed. I stand on much firmer ground, as hosting is only a
>side activity at L-Soft, but I can still imagine what must have gone
>through their mind before they hit the send button.
>
>http://www.lsoft.com/news/aol-goodmail.asp
>
> Eric
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