campaign against 'premium' e-mail

Groups campaign against 'premium' e-mail - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "A coalition of nonprofit and public interest groups in the United States is beginning a campaign to protest plans by America Online and Yahoo, which each offer e-mail services, to charge high-volume senders of e-mail fees to guarantee preferred delivery of their messages.

AOL and Yahoo are working with Goodmail, a Silicon Valley company, which plans to charge between a quarter of a cent and 1 cent for each message. The two Internet companies will get the bulk of the fees that Goodmail collects.

The campaign against the fees was to begin Tuesday and is being organized by MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group that uses its list of three million e-mail addresses to influence public opinion and raise money, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group. They have enlisted about 50 other supporters including the Gun Owners of America, the Democratic National Committee and the National Humane Society.

The groups have set up a Web site, www.dearaol.com, which has an online petition asking AOL to change its policy. Gilles Frydman, the president of the Association of Cancer Online Resources, which sends 1.5 million e-mail messages a month to cancer patients, said he was joining the protest because he did not believe free delivery for his group would continue."