soapbox

For those who don’t know, AOL and Yahoo have re-suggested the email tax (Bill Gates mentioned it a couple years ago). Basically a pay-to-send system, large emailers willing to pay an “email tax” could bypass spam filters and get guaranteed access to people’s inboxes—with their messages having higher priority over standard/personal emails.

Naturally, there’s a bunch of outrage about this, but I think it really would hit small business owners hardest, since they can’t afford to spend an extra $10k or so just to send emails to their AOL customers.

Note that I used would above, because I don’t think this is going to happen. AOL is a stupid and overbloated ISP, but they’re not that stupid - it just won’t work.

If you’re feeling particularly motivated, here’s the Move-On link with some info and a protest petition, etc.

It’s really snowing.