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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