Plan for Fees on Some E-Mail spurs online Protest
February 28th, 2006A group of nonprofit and public interest groups is beginning a campaign today to protest plans by America Online and Yahoo, which each offer e-mail services, to charge high-volume senders of e-mail fees to guarantee preferred delivery of their messages.
AOL and Yahoo are working with Goodmail, a Silicon Valley company, which plans to charge between a quarter-cent and a cent for each message. The two Internet companies will get the bulk of the fees that Goodmail collects.
Richard Gingras, chief executive of Goodmail, said the company planned to offer unspecified discounts to nonprofit senders of e-mail. AOL will start using the Goodmail system within a month. Yahoo will begin testing the service several months later and will charge fees only to deliver messages related to purchases or financial transactions.
The campaign is being organized by MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group that uses its list of three million e-mail addresses to influence public opinion and raise money, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group. They have enlisted about 50 other supporters including the Gun Owners of America, the Democratic National Committee and the National Humane Society.
The groups have set up a Web site (www.dearaol.com) which will have an online petition users can sign asking AOL to change its policy.
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