DearAOL.com Coalition Update

DearAOL.com coalition members,

Over the weekend, the DearAOL.com coalition increased tenfold to more
than 500 organizations.  Thanks for being one of our original founding
members.  You're one of our anchors -- if you have any questions or
ideas for the campaign along the way, please mail me at danny(a)eff.org

As you know, AOL tried to spin itself away from the hurt of the first
few days off our campaign. We've issued two press releases to dampen any
idea that the fight is over. We are also reaching out to AOL to try to clarify some details
that were very murky in the AOL release last Friday.

As far as we can tell, AOL's current plan is (1) to continue to move
toward paid email and (2) move toward outsourcing their enhanced white
list process. They've positioned this as "full email functionality at no
charge to any qualified not-for-profit." But since there is no
definition of "qualified not-for-profit", we cannot know who would or
would not be included in that program.  Currently any sender - not just
non-profits - can currently apply for whitelist status.  So nothing has
changed, except they seem to be trying to limit whitelisting to
non-profits.  We'll let you know when we learn more.

Our premise is that as long as AOL plans to make money off of paid
email, everyone else, whether on the white-list or not, will find
themselves more and more marginalized in the inbox.  Our coalition
contains AOL members who are concerned about the comapny selling access
to their inbox.  We include for-profit and non-profit organizations who
are worried by AOL's attempt to intevene and tap a profit from their
communication with their members. And we also cover amazing new internet
services, such as the Association of Cancer Online Resources, which
would be crippled by the imposition of artificial transaction costs
online.

AOL is clearly worried. We hope to continue worrying them,until this
problem is fixed. We'll let you know how matters progress.

Best wishes, and thanks once again for your support,