14 DAY TRIAL // Next Tuesday, a group of nonprofit organizations and small businesses will announce the formation of a coalition aimed at putting a stop to AOL and Yahoo's plans to charge mass emailers. The coalition, expected to be launched at a press event in New York, will be sponsored by a digital rights advocacy group, EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and will include two political adversaries: the liberal MoveOn.org and the conservative RightMarch.com.
Yahoo and AOL first signed on to use Goodmail's CertifiedEmail service last October, and it was close to being deployed. With CertifiedEmail, senders agree not to send unsolicited email. They pay a fee of between a quarter of a US cent and one cent in order for their messages to receive preferential treatment in AOL and Yahoo inboxes.
AOL will start using the service "in the next month", and it will be available to Yahoo users "shortly thereafter", a Goodmail spokeswoman said.
AOL has not even the slightest intention of backing away from CertifiedEmail, which will start being applied within 30 days, according to AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham. Like the US Postal Service's Priority Mail, the service simply gives customers another choice in sending and receiving messages, he said.
On the other hand, RightMarch.com said that "thousands of dollars a month are being spent on email delivery services to make sure all of our members receive our alerts. And very soon, thanks to AOL and Yahoo, we might not be able to afford to send them". By Thursday, RightMarch.com members had sent more than 28,000 email messages as a protest to the Goodmail service, according to RightMarch.com president William Greene.
However, Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras replied that such critics, brought by Greene and the EFF are not including the consumer benefits that CertifiedEmail provides by assuring recipients that their email messages are legitimate and that "it represents a very important service that email needs today".