Here is a follow up on the our post about Goodmail. A few weeks ago Esther Dyson wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times in support of the Goodmail service, a start up which charges fees to senders of email to ensure their delivery. She argues that the services by either Goodmail or others are inevitable and will provide value of email recipients by eliminating spam. While I agree that customers should be allowed to chose whatever services they want, many of Dyson’s claims need to further examined to see if they make sense.
Dyson claims:
“I agree that pretty soon sending most e-mail will cost money, but I think that’s only right. It costs money to guarantee quality and safety. Moreover, I think the market will work, and that it will not shut out deserving senders, if we only let it work freely…”
“…In the short run, AOL and others will serve as the recipients’ proxies. If they don’t do a good job of ensuring that customers get the mail they want, even from nonpaying senders, they will lose their customers…
I’m not clear on how market competition requires additional cost to users. People are already free to chose email providers based on their spam filters. Email earns revenue for providers. Even yahoo, gmail and hotmail earn money through ads and sponored links. Adding another layer of fees will only give email providers an economic incentive to abandon their spam filters, which will make senders of email feel obligated to pay for these extra services. Email providers currently have incentives to continually improve their spam filters, which work rather well. Employing more strategies along the lines of improved mechanisms for users to report spam seem to be a more fairly distribution of the costs of insuring the delivery of email.
“And in the long run, recipients will be able to use services like Goodmail to set their own prices for receiving mail.
In my case, I’d have a list. I’d charge nothing for people I know, 50 cents for anyone new (though if I add the sender to my list after reading the mail, I’ll cancel the 50 cents) and $3 for random advertisers. Ex-boyfriends pay $10.”
I doubt the practicality of this scheme. It would only work if people receive email, open it, and approve new addresses, in a timely matter. People do not read all their email, as I’ve seen Inboxes with thousands of emails, many of them unopened. People forget that they have requested information, which would lead to disputed charged. People abandon email addresses and they accidentally erase email from servers. People change their minds on what spam is. Sometimes, email updates which people sign up to receive and later the become spam. If a firm buys an email list in good faith, are they open to these fines as well? The thought of resolving all these disputes of who wanted what email would be a bureaucratic mess.
“If people like those little stamps that mark their mail as safe and wanted or as commercial transactions, then let the customers have them. And let other companies compete with Goodmail to offer better and less expensive service.”
Goodmail is not passing on costs to receivers, but to senders. The companies who will feel the most effect are the ones with less resources, for example as she notes, non-profit organizations. Why this has to be true is still unclear to me.
Category Archives: nonprofit
the email tax: an internet myth soon to become true
After years as an Internet urban myth, the email tax appears to be close at hand. The New York TImes reports that AOL and Yahoo have partnered with startup Goodmail to start offering guaranteed delivery of mass email to organizations for a fee. Organizations with large email lists can pay to have their email go directly to AOL and Yahoo customers’ inboxes, bypassing spam filters. Goodmail claims that they will offer discounts to non-profits.
Moveon.org and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have joined together to create an alliance of nonprofit and public interest organizations to protest AOL’s plans. They argue that this two-tiered system will create an economic incentive to decrease investment into AOL’s spam filtering in order to encourage mass emailers to use the pay-to-deliver service. They have created an online petition called dearaol.com for people to request that AOL stop these plans. A similar protest to Yahoo who intends to launch this service after AOL is being planned as well. The alliance has created unusual bedfellows, including Gun Owners of America, AFL-CIO, Humane Society of United States and Human Rights Campaign, who are resisting the pressure to use this service.
Part of the leveling power of email is that the marginal cost of another email is effectively zero. By perverting this feature of email, smaller businesses, non-profits, and individuals will once again be put at a disadvantage to large affluent firms. Further, this service will do nothing to reduce spam, rather it is designed to help mass emailers. An AOL spokesman, Nicholas Graham is quoted as saying AOL will earn revenue akin to a “lemonade stand” which further questions by AOL would pursue this plan in the first place. Although the only affected parties will initially be AOL and Yahoo users, it sets a very dangerous precedent that goes against the democratizing spirit of the Internet and digital information.