AOL Backs Off 'E-mail Tax' → So, how is this a tax?

Taxes are exercised by government, not AOL. Makes for a cute sound byte, but it dramatizes what amounts to a bad business decision by a company that has been making dubious decisions for a decade or more.

Great. My carriers might start passing on this tax to me for writing friends at AOL, but AOL users will start hearing about viagra, rolexes, etc. from "redcross.org."

tax ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tks)
n.
1. A contribution for the support of a government required of persons, groups, or businesses within the domain of that government.
2. A fee or dues levied on the members of an organization to meet its expenses.
3. A burdensome or excessive demand; a strain.

Dunno, 2&3 certainlycould apply.

Perhaps, but there hasn't been an English example of that usage for a few hundred years, I'd imagine.

The two-tier debate approach is referenced as a tariff, so why not? It is slightly hyperbolic, but I think it's accurate. Call it a fee, tax, tariff, whatever...

But that's the crux of my argument. It seemed obvious to me that the word "tax" was chosen for it's propensity to incite a passionate response, rather than something more appropriate to a private business decision.

Probably why it's in quotes.

Referencing it as a tax certainly isn't uncommon:

»news.google.com/news?hl= ··· =AOL+tax

I really think it's a moot point trying split hairs over calling it a tax, tariff or fee. Granted "tax" was probably chosen for inflammatory reasons. But lets not let this get tangled up in syntax because there is an underlying issue here.

If all the rest of the ISPs were to follow this move it lends a sort of "credibility" to spammers that is the last thing the ISPs should be doing. It lends them that credibility because the ISP is saying you are a legitimate business and should be paying a "business" type fee, tax, etc for your activities.

Sure from a business point of view it gives ISPs another source of revenue but IMO in the end we all will be at the minimum more annoyed by spam.

As for those who do the mass/bulk mailings, they could care less. That cost would simply be passed off to those who are paying them to spam us all.

Stumbles, I see one major flaw in your reasoning. I would venture to guess that a large bulk of the spam email out there is sent from "anonymous" sources. Basically, most of the spam seems to have faked headers. The reason for this is because the spammers don't want the spam traced back to them. Even tracing the emails back to IP addresses is often fruitless because the major spammers bounce from one dial-up account to the next.

So, in short, if spammers are using forged headers and dial-up (or overseas) accounts to spew spam... they more than likely ARE NOT going to be contacting Goodmail to identify themselves and pay money to have their spam go through unfiltered. I would suspect Goodmail's program requires identification of what servers/IPs a companies email will be coming from.

I seriously doubt this program would cause the amount of spam in our inboxes to increase... but, that doesn't mean I like the idea either.

Look how sneaky these Top fortune companies are trying to be. There not going to end up anywhere and end up bankrupted in the future.

Yeah, those are some good points and have to say an oversight on my part.

Though judging from all the stuff I see in my inbox. Very, very little of it is from "legitimate" bulk mailers. Which leads me in around about way to "how" AOL was able to determine these bulk mailers as having such an impact when spam is so much more prolific. I doubt seriously AOL did an in-depth analysis of email headers an sorted it all out.

So I really have to wonder to the validity of AOLs annoyance with such mailers. And have to think this is nothing but a scheme to shore up a failing company.