Liberal MoveOn.org and conservative RightMarch.com are both political action committees. They usually find themselves pitted against each other on many issues of interest, but on the issue of Goodmail they find that they finally have some common ground. Both committees will be a part of a coalition of nonprofit organizations and small businesses that will meet at a press event next Tuesday in New York to unveil their attempts to stop AOL and Yahoo! from charging companies that send out mass e-mails. The event will be sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The EFF-backed coalition will attempt to prevent AOL and Yahoo! from using Goodmail’s e-mail certification system because it would force fees upon senders of bulk opt-in e-mail.
“I think they need to abandon this plan,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the EFF. “The ISPs’ view that they can auction off preferred access to my email box is really wrong. It’s not theirs to sell.”
Earlier in the week, both MoveOn.org and RightMarch.com claimed that the fees on bulk e-mail sending would hurt the free exchange of ideas that the Internet and, namely, e-mail offers users. “The very existence of online civic participation and the free Internet as we know it are under attack by AOL,” MoveOn.org wrote in an alert it sent to members last Wednesday. The committee has begun an online petition that demands that AOL step away from its plans to go through with the certified e-mail service.
Last Wednesday, RightMarch.com urged its members to contact AOL and Yahoo!’s respective headquarters to demand “that they abandon their plans for a ‘pay-to-speak’ system,” according to an alert that was sent to its members. The alert also said, “We spend thousands of dollars a month on e-mail 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, members of RightMarch.com had already sent in excess of 28,000 e-mails in opposition to the Goodmail service, according to William Greene, president of RightMarch.com.
Greene says that RightMarch.com sends anywhere between two and three million e-mails to its members per week, and that about a third of them use either AOL or Yahoo! e-mail addresses.
However, Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras responded by saying that critics such as the EFF and their coalition is missing the point by ignoring the benefits that the CertifiedEmail service provides for consumers.
AOL and Yahoo agreed to use Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail service last October, and they have no intentions of going back on their plans. According to AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham, AOL aims to begin utilizing the service within the next 30 days, while Yahoo plans on unveiling the service “shortly thereafter,” according to a Goodmail spokeswoman.
Concerning the unusual teaming of the left and right sides of the spectrum, Greene admitted that it is an unlikely pairing. “It’s one of those dogs and cats living together kind of things,” Greene said.
The gathering at Tuesday’s press event is expected to include a diverse group of members. “It’s going to be not only right and left, but up, down, every way you go,” Cohn said.
Though AOL and Yahoo are unlikely to heed to the group’s demands, it remains to be seen what kind of long-term growth and influence this kind of opposition can sustain.
Sources:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/
index.cfm?newsid=5753
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/
marketinginsider/wpn-50-20060224Goodmail
HatedByLeftAndRight.html
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