New Pay-for-Spam Plan

This one has me scratching my head. Two of the world's biggest e-mail account providers, Yahoo and America Online, plan to introduce a new service that would charge senders a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox without first passing through junk mail filters. To translate, this means that bulk e-mailers (spammers) can pay a fee to make sure you get their mail. And you don't have a choice!

The fees, which would range from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per e-mail, supposedly are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity-theft scams. In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed their messages won't be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients they're legitimate. Of course, this only applies to customers who have a Yahoo or AOL e-mail account.

Both companies have long filtered e-mail by searching for keywords commonly contained in spam and fraudulent e-mail. AOL also strips images and Web links from many messages to prevent the display of pornographic pictures and malicious Web addresses. Both practices sometimes falsely identify legitimate messages as junk mail, making life difficult for businesses that rely on e-mail.

As one might expect, this new plan has brought some opposition. The AFL-CIO, Tim O'Reilly, Gun Owners of America, the Democratic National Committee, the EFF, MoveOn.org, RightMarch and many others have all strongly come out against this new plan.

In an open letter to AOL, the diverse group of signatories contends: "A pay-to-send system won't help the fight against spam -- in fact, this plan assumes that spam will continue and that mass mailers will be willing to pay to have their e-mails bypass spam filters. And non-paying spammers will not reduce the amount of mail they throw at your filters simply because others pay to evade them. ... The bottom-line is that charging an 'e-mail tax' actually gives AOL a financial incentive to degrade e-mail for non-paying senders. This would disrupt the communications of millions who cannot afford to pay your fees -- including the non-profits, civic organizations, charities, small businesses, and community mailing lists that have arisen for every topic under the sun and that make e-mail so vital to your subscribers."

AOL and Yahoo said the program, which is being offered through a company called Goodmail Systems, will target banks, online retailers and other groups that send large amounts of e-mail. In exchange for a payment and a pledge to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, the companies would be ensured their e-mails aren't diverted to spam folders or have images or Web addresses filtered out.

I fully expect that some day these two companies will offer its users (for a fee, of course), the ability to block these messages. I reminds me of the automobile radar manufacturers that sell radar detectors to consumers, then sell police agencies countermeasurers to block these radar detectors.