In addition to my professional roles I also help maintain couple of large
non-profit organization mailing lists. I hate spam, I don’t do spam and I
have been on the AOL whitelist for almost 2 years and since then have had
very good relations with the postmaster team.
However if this 'goodmail' deal does actually get implemented I will
actively NOT ACCEPT AOL subscription and furthermore send out an
announcement through our electronic and physical mailing to suggest our
members to dump AOL service all together.
I have aprox 45,000 people on my lists and reach close to 200,000 people. I
don’t know if I can neither afford to or even if I could afford would want
to accept such one sided action to partition the open internet into taxed
segments.
AOL is no longer able to ride shotgun based purely on its closed off content
offerings as it did 10 years ago, I believe if enough parties decide to
ignore and stop servicing AOL boxes, instead of them segmenting the internet
we can effectively retire them and/or this decision...
While certified email servers and spam filters are good tools to use in a
war against spam what is suggested in the 'aol-goodmail' deal, pretty much
an email tax, is unfortuantely arrogant and potentially an ill-concieved
plan to create an additional revenue stream from spam instead of working
towards providing a better service for their users.
Sincerely,
A. Ömer Köker
[log in to unmask]
'Execution is the missing link between aspirations and results'
> -----Original Message-----
> From: LISTSERV site administrators' forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eric Thomas
> Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 11:54 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: AOL-Goodmail deal: Good Mail or "Goodfellas"?
>
> 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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