Another Side to the Goodmail Debate?

Micah L. Sifry | March 3, 2006 - 9:14pm | 1 comment | Email This!

I haven't quite made up my mind about AOL's so-called "e-mail tax," which Matt Stoller blogged about here earlier in the week (at my urging).

On one hand, it's hard to accept paying a price for a service that costs AOL almost nothing to perform, i.e. delivering email to its customers. And a "pay-to-send" system will definitely create a two-tiered internet, where email senders who can't afford the email surcharge will inevitably experience a lower quality of service, and the vibrant democracy of voices online will likely become much more stratified.

On the other hand, see what tech industry guru Esther Dyson has to say on her not-quite-a-blog (February 14, 2006 entry):

People are acting as if it were evil to ask for money for providing a service. Everyone is free to say no. Goodmail is not stopping any other mail...while, indeed, the proliferation of spam *is* de facto stopping other mail, because at some point recipients start deleting their mail carelessly...

She's right that spam is degrading the value of email (is this a tragedy of the commons?), and I bet that declining open rates on political email are related in part to that problem. But is the solution worse than the problem? Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cindy Cohn sure thinks so:

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. The best solution is to put more power in the hands of users to control spam filters and a robust market in those filters. Allowing ISPs to auction off access to email boxes and ransom free speech solves nothing.

What do you think?

Comments

HBO is a Cable Tax

by Daniel Dreymann on March 4, 2006 - 12:20pm

The EFF’s crusade is about opposing innovation, limiting choices and preventing mailbox providers from protecting their customers.

In Cindy's imaginary world, mailboxes are not filled with junk, phishing and identity theft do not exist, legitimate messages are not caught in spam filters and email is still the great medium it used to be ten years ago -- before spammers and scammers took it away from all of us. In her imaginary world, the internet is free (not only as in free speech but also as in free beer); mail servers, bandwidth capacity, storage and sysadmin services are all manna, I guess.

Ask most experts in the email and anti-spam community and they will tell you that when it comes to email, the EFF is clueless. Cindy opposed CAN-SPAM, and is against spam filters unless these can be made to never, ever, make a mistake (again living in fantasyland).

To Cindy’s dismay, the American consumer *demands* spam filtering. A mailbox provider who chooses to deliver unfiltered mail will face an exodus of customers, seeking a protected mailbox elsewhere. With filtering, false positives (the mistaken labeling of a legitimate message as spam) and false negatives (letting a phishing message go through) are inevitable. CertifiedEmail is one solution to this problem.

Consumers and brands alike seek protection from phishing. Experts often can’t tell apart a legitimate message from a phishing attempt. What is the average consumer to do? Use the internet less? Never use on-line banking? Abandon e-commerce? Donate to the American Red Cross through snail mail? CertifiedEmail restores trust in the channel. With CertifiedEmail, Joe can trust that the bank statement is indeed from his bank, Jane can click-to-donate, knowing her money goes to the Red Cross and not to an evil crook.

The “electronic postage” concept was once championed by no other than Brad Templeton, the EFF chairman: "E-stamps ... Recommendation: Support as long-term solution"
(http://www.templetons.com/brad/spam/spamsol.html)

How can the idea be so evil now if it was once the EFF’s very own recommendation? Why portray it as a tax?!

Email is an ultra-competitive market with hundreds of mailbox providers offering free or paying services, why can’t the EFF let AOL users vote with their feet and wallets if they like the service they get?!

I once had a lot of respect for the EFF as I believed they were on the right side of things for most non-email-related issues. Their recently demonstrated total lack of intellectual integrity and the recourse to the tax demagogy have irreparably eroded that respect. It is now clear to me they subscribe to the notion that the cause justifies the means. Using the catchy but purposely misleading “tax” terminology is not something an honorable institution would do.

Taxes are inevitable and imposed by governments. CertifiedEmail is about choice. This is an email tax just like HBO is a cable tax.

Daniel Dreymann, Goodmail Systems

PS: I wish I could claim credit for it but the HBO simile is not mine(http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/4712).