AOL: No 'email tax' on not-for-profits

AOL intends to pick up the costs for not-for-profit groups that wish to send emails to AOL members, a move that comes less than a week after a consortium spoke out against the company's plan to charge for a new bulk email service.

AOL said on Friday that it will offer not-for-profit organisations two new free email options which possess many of the features - including images and web links - of the company's premium service designed for commercial mass email.

On Monday, a consortium of not-for-profit and public interest groups, including the AFL-CIO, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Gun Owners of America and MoveOn.org Civic Action, lashed out at the plan by AOL and Yahoo! to charge a fee for guaranteed delivery of bulk emails.

Some opponents called the fee-based service an email tax, while others said it would effectively silence less affluent organisations which can't afford to pay AOL's fees. AOL argues that the rise of phishing scams and spam requires the company to create a certified email so customers can tell good email from bad.

An AOL spokesman said that though opponents were successful only in whipping up confusion, the new free services for not-for-profits came in response to criticism.

He said: "We want to make it crystal clear for not-for-profits as well as not-for-profit advocacy groups that they will have multiple avenues of having email delivered."

The first new free service, AOL's Enhanced White List, is for not-for-profit organisations that meet the company's anti-spam and email requirements. Messages will be handled and delivered in a way nearly identical to the company's fee-based certified mail.

Unlike certified email, messages sent via the Enhanced White List will not be marked as "certified" and will be delivered for free. AOL will charge commercial companies up to a penny per email for certified email.

The second offering will allow not-for-profits to use a third-party email accreditation service to authenticate their messages. Such services charge a flat, non-recurring fee, and AOL has pledged to pay those fees.

AOL is in talks with several accreditation providers and said it expects to complete tests of the new service within 30 days. This second offering should be ready for the public within three months, the company said.

Cindy Cohn, legal director for EFF in San Francisco, commended AOL's move, calling it a good first step. But she worried about how AOL would determine which companies were not-for-profits. She feared AOL would recognise only those companies actually registered with the government as a not-for-profit.

Cohn said: "A lot of people we want to protect are not registered. Under this kind of plan, it would leave a whole lot of people, who run big and valuable mailing lists, out in the cold."

Greg Sandoval writes for CNET News.com