Marc Perkel <marc@???> wrote:
> As many of you know AOL is contemplating a pay to send email plan.
[...]
> .ifdef LOWEST_MX
>
> defer message = WE PROTEST AOL PAY TO SEND EMAIL PLAN!
> hosts = *.aol.com
>
> .endif
the pay is only for the mail received by AOL. and judging by the article
quoted in your mail, i don't think they will 'discriminate' non-payers
at all.
my opinion is that these are their MXes, they are free to introduce
whatever solutions they wish for when it comes to receiving email from
third parties. i, too, think that the whole idea is bad, not just 'payed
guarantee' (bonded sender sounds like a good idea for some), but paying
for a 'trust' directly and only to a single company.
one way or another, this sounds like a blatant attempt to make money by
allowing spammers to reliably send spam under a fee.
anyway, they won't listen. they're *that* kind of a commercial company,
if they'd care about *this* kind of 'ethics', they wouldn't come up with
this announcement in the first place. a DEFER text message won't do
anything. and theoretically, if one tries to 'punish' AOL by denying
incoming email from them, which is just an artificial imposition of
their reasoning upon their users, they will just lose without gaining
anything.
i think that what we need is to get people to change their email
provider, protest directed to a company only won't make anyone else
acknowledge that. a person using AOL email isn't obligated to use it, if
one acknowledges your cause, they will migrate from AOL. if one won't,
there's little we can do.
