Groups mobilize against fees for bulk e-mailings

Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet service are planning to encourage companies to pay for the virtual equivalent of certified mail as part of the effort to fight junk e-mails.

Bulk e-mailers who pay for the service would be able to send directly to recipients. Those who decline to pay could continue sending mass messages, but their e-mails would still have to navigate the Internet providers' spam filters, which mistakenly capture nearly a quarter of legitimate commercial e-mails every year.

While everyone hates the unsolicited messages that clog inboxes, the plan has spawned a backlash from an unusual coalition of liberal and conservative political groups that rely on bulk e-mails to communicate with members and raise money.

''This represents a threat to an open Internet," said Adam Green, civic communications director of MoveOn.org Civic Action, a liberal lobbying group.

His conservative counterpart, William Greene, president of RightMarch.com, agreed. ''It's actually going to restrict or have a negative impact on the free-speech activities of so many people across the country," he said.

The two groups belong to a coalition of small businesses and nonprofits that today is launching a campaign to spur public opposition to the Yahoo-AOL plan, warning that it would set up a two-tiered system in which big companies pay for first-rate service, while others continue to run the risk of being deleted by anti-spam filters.

AOL plans to launch its service within a month; Yahoo expects to have its service in place in spring.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said the plan is a sensible way to provide more dependable e-mail deliveries. ''It's not much different from going to the post office and choosing from the wide variety of options as to how you want the mail delivered," he said. Standard Internet e-mail would be supplemented by a fee-based ''express mail" service that avoids spam filters, which tie up a significant number of legitimate messages.

Bulk e-mailers who want the premium service would be charged between a quarter-cent and one cent for each certified message sent. The revenue from the program would be split between the recipient's Internet provider -- either Yahoo or AOL -- and Goodmail Systems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., which developed a certified e-mail service.

MoveOn estimates that 400,000 people of the 3 million on its electronic mailing list are AOL subscribers, meaning that sending a mass e-mail could cost $1,000 to $4,000. RightMarch says it sends about 3 million e-mails a week, with about one-third going to AOL or Yahoo addresses. That could cost RightMarch as much as $10,000 a week if it pays for certified e-mail.

Both organizations fear that their fund-raising and informational efforts would be crippled if they must pay to deliver messages to AOL and Yahoo users. AOL's Graham said his company stands to gain little profit on the deal. ''It's a very modest revenue amount that we will use to simply cover the cost of ongoing spam-fighting," he said.

But even though AOL and Yahoo vow to continue free delivery of e-mails, the critics fear that the companies will reduce the quality of service to goad more organizations into paying up. They could stop investing in improved filtering technology, which could lead to an even larger percentage of legitimate e-mails being blocked.

Danny O'Brien, activism coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the system would give Internet companies a financial incentive to let their standard e-mail service deteriorate. ''The only way you can sell a value-added service like this," O'Brien said, ''is by degrading the service you have now."

Today's e-mail system already delivers poor service for companies that send lots of messages. Credit card firms, banks, and other businesses send millions of e-mail invoices and bills every month. But much of this mail never reaches its destination because it is blocked by antispam software.

Return Path Inc. of New York City runs tests twice a year to estimate the amount of legitimate commercial e-mail rejected by spam filters. Its latest data, from the first half of 2005, found that 21 percent of such messages were rejected. That means millions of bills, invoices, and notices aren't getting to people who want them. AOL and Yahoo hope their new CertifiedEmail service will help solve this problem.

CertifiedEmail, created by Goodmail Systems, lets bulk e-mail senders register for premium e-mail delivery. Goodmail investigates applicants to confirm that they're legitimate businesses and organizations. Successful applicants get a certification from Goodmail, as well as software that allows them to add an encrypted digital signature to e-mail.

AOL and Yahoo will program their e-mail computers to look for the CertifiedEmail signature. All such messages will be immediately delivered to AOL or Yahoo subscribers, with no danger that they'll be rejected as spam.

The certification could also reduce the risk of ''phishing" attacks, which use fake messages that appear to be from banks and other businesses to trick recipients into revealing sensitive data, such as credit card numbers. A piece of certified mail will display an icon that's nearly impossible to fake, showing recipients it's legitimate.

Opponents also worry that the e-mail plan is a prelude to corporate efforts to disrupt the traditional functioning of the Internet. ''This is the opening salvo of a larger fight to keep the Internet free and accessible for everyday people," MoveOn's Green said.

The Internet was created as an egalitarian system. A low-budget start-up has the same access to Internet users as the biggest corporation or government agency. Fee-based e-mail could change that by creating a premium tier only large companies could afford. And it could extend beyond e-mail. Major Internet providers, including SBC Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., have said they intend to create premium Internet services that would run on a private segment of the network, with faster data speeds and higher reliability. Competitors would have to pay the Internet providers to use this premium network, or accept being consigned to the slower, less-reliable ''standard" Internet. Yahoo insists it will not allow any decline in standard e-mail service.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.