Pay to send email...

[bill at horne.net (Bill Horne)]

Ward Vandewege wrote:

>On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 11:20:07AM -0500, Bill Horne wrote:
>  
>
>>1. It's AOL's attempt to create a "walled garden" for its users, and to 
>>charge an admission fee to anyone not affiliated with Time-Warner.
>>    
>>
>
>It's kind of funny. They started as a 'walled garden'. They had to give in to
>customer demand and offer full internet access. Now they're trying to go
>back. I'm curious how their customers will take this :) Initially I imagine
>it won't be an issue. But like you said Bill, if this flies, they'll probably
>try to make everyone pay to send e-mail to their subscribes. That's what
>greedy media companies would see as a logical revenue stream. Should be fun
>to see them go down in flames at that point.
>
>How important is AOL nowadays in terms of numbers of subscribers? I've been
>convincing people who still pay the AOL tax to switch to Gmail and the like
>for quite a while now. Most of the people I know have - though fewer things
>in life are harder than getting AOL to cancel your membership ;)
>
>  
>
Well, I don't think they're go "down in flames", but I'm sure they'll 
get less than total control over their user base. Pundits have been 
predicting the construction of walled gardens for years now, and now we 
see the first one being erected.

This is, as many have said already, the problem of the commons - when a 
community sets aside common grazing land for livestock, there is an 
incentive for a few agressive users to overgraze the land. The solution 
to the problem is private property, but some things must remain public 
by their nature - such as roads - and the common areas are _still_ 
subject to "overgrazing" - overloaded trucks ruin the roads that we all 
pay for - so we turn to governments to regulate and restrict the uses of 
the common lands/roads/watershed/whatever.

It's true that we're disposed to suffer while the evil is sufferable, 
but we're fed up with spam, and AOL is proposing another old solution: a 
turnpike.

FWIW. YMMV.

Bill

-- 
E. William Horne
William Warren Consulting
Computer and Network Installation & Service
http://www.billhorne.com/
Voice:	781 784-7287
Fax:	781 784-0951