Stop The Email Fee/Tax!

AOL and Yahoo have announced that they will soon begin imposing their own “tax” on email in the form of a fee charged to groups like Grassfire. For each email Grassfire sends to our AOL team members, AOL will charge a fee to ensure the email is delivered.

As proposed, the fee/tax would be paid by groups like Grassfire.org -- NOT by you the end user. But the result is clear -- it will muzzle citizen activism and could lead to the end of free email because these fees will ultimately be indirectly paid by consumers. We call it a “tax” because since AOL and Yahoo represent such a large portion of the market (50%), groups like Grassfire will ultimately be forced to pay to “ensure” that our messages are delivered. And as a private-sector tax, it ultimately amounts to extortion. For more, Listen to our audio report.

If AOL and Yahoo succeed, we expect every other ISP will quickly follow suit and it will not be long before the government finds a way to tap into this new source of revenue. This new “fee/tax” is really extortion and is one of the most serious threats to online citizen activism that we have faced. We need every concerned citizen -- not just AOL and Yahoo members -- to sign this petition to stop the email tax! Listen to Grassfire’s audio report on this issue.

For more information, including an audio report, and to sign the petition and listen to the audio report.