Move on petition to AOL about changes in email delevery:

[missouri dem 2]

Dear friend,

Thank you. Your name has been added to the petition and your comments will be delivered to America Online.

America Online needs to hear from customers right away. Please ask AOL not to charge non-profit civic and political organizing groups to "guarantee" delivery of their email to members:

America Online
Phone: [phone]


Help track our impact by letting us know you called at:

http://civic.moveon.org/call?cp_id=247&tg=193&id=-3247889-6Nx1DExhLjC4PjhxGf9GgQ

AOL might give you some standard talking points—acting as if nothing is wrong. It would be good to familiarize yourself with the below "Basic Facts To Know About This Issue" before calling.

After calling, please take a moment to invite your friends who have AOL to sign the petition. You can just forward the sample letter that's also below.

Spreading the word is critical, but please only pass this message along to those who know you—spam hurts our campaign.

Thanks for all you do.

ndash;The MoveOn.org Civic Action Team

P.S. BASIC FACTS TO KNOW ABOUT THIS ISSUE:

Right now, email services like AOL and Yahoo put membership groups on something called a "whitelist" (the opposite of a "blacklist"), so they can email their members without getting caught in a spam filter.
AOL and Yahoo threaten a devastating one-two punch to membership groups.
1) Eliminate the whitelist, or make it significantly harder for membership groups to qualify for itmdash;causing many membership group emails to be labeled "spam" and never get delivered.

2) Offer new "certified" mail that bypasses spam filters and "guarantees" delivery. The New York Times calls it "a controversial system" that requires "1/4 of a cent to a penny" for every message sent to every email address -- equaling thousands of dollars per email sent to large membership lists. This threatens the very existence of online organizing.

AOL and Yahoo claim they will still accept email from senders who have not paid. But that only works if they promise not to eliminate the "whitelist" (or effectively eliminate it by altering the criteria so many membership groups won't qualify). They have made no such promise.
AOL has openly flirted with eliminating the "whitelist" in the past. If AOL and Yahoo kick membership groups off the whitelist, promises to "still accept" non-paid emails have no meaningmdash;"accepting" means they are thrown in the spam filter and not delivered.
The vendor AOL and Yahoo hired to run this "certified" service knows that this will harm non-profit membership groups. Their website states, "We have crafted a special program to allow highly-qualified non-profits" to get "full benefits of the CertifiedEmail service at no cost for the duration of 2006." It does not say what "high-qualified" means, and after 2006 all non-profits are out of luck. If the whitelist is gone, their e-mails go to spam filters and go undelivered.
AOL and Yahoo may have lost their understanding of what makes the Internet work so well for regular people. In the New York Times, AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said, "The last time I checked, the postal service has a very similar system to provide different options." AOL may have forgotten that one of email's main attributes is that it broke down the financial barriers posed by snail mail -- barriers that stood in the way of regular people partaking in civic and political organizing on issues they cared about.

SAMPLE MESSAGE FOR YOUR FRIENDS:

Subject: Stop AOL from blocking our email

Hi,

I just signed an important online petition because the very existence of civic and political organizing online is under attack by America Online, and we need to fight back quickly.

The petition's at:
http://civic.moveon.org/AOLemail/

AOL just announced plans to charge groups with large membership lists every time they send an email. Online political groups, issue groups, charities, and other non-profits who have large memberships will essentially be censored off the Internet.

AOL basically wants to blackmail organizations with large email lists. The only way for groups to be sure members receive their emails would be to pay what the New York Times calls the "electronic equivalent of a postage stamp" for each email address every time an email is sent.

If they don't pay, your emails could go into a black holemdash;or be "stripped of images and Web links." If AOL succeeds, other companies will followmdash;so we need to fight back today.

The petition to AOL is located at:
http://civic.moveon.org/AOLemail/

Thanks!

[400Years]

1. boycott AOL