Pay Per eMail?

Noises are being made on whether AOL might start blocking email or might make people pay to send email thru AOL. I glumly admit to having paid too little attention to the matter, resigning myself to the depressing conclusion of an inevitably ham-fisted corporate takeover of what may never again be a freely accessible internet. Now I'm hearing Yahoo! is considering the same thing, which shook me from my slumber, for I do do Yahoo!

But not true... ! Or so indicates a forwarded email I received today:

From: "Luke Wolter" ...@yahoo-inc.com
Subject: RE: Yahoo question
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 09:26:08 -0500

This is false. We have no policies in place to block any email accounts from our Groups property, especially Gmail.

Furthermore, I can't imagine a business reason why we would ever do this in the future. At Yahoo! we respect our customers above all else and never forget that they come to us by choice. We share a personal responsibility to maintain our customers' loyalty and trust.

Uh huh! Was "respect" for its customers the reason Yahoo! capitulated to DOJ's demand for its search-engine records (i.e., who's looking up what) without a fight?

And dig the wording here: "I can't imagine a business reason... " Well now, how about profit? If AOL does it, then Hotmail falls in line, how long before Yahoo! and Google agree to agree? This smells of a politician who says he has "no plans to run for higher office" the day before he announces he's running for higher office.

Hold on to your genitals, folks, if you like your 1-horse cable service, yer gonna love corporate-controlled, anti-trust waived, monopolized internet service and its ever-more cheesily commercialized content.

Coming to a monitor near you!