I have been reading hither and yon on these postings about the fact that AOL and Yahoo are starting to charge for the "privilege" of having our double opt in newsletters put through to people's in boxes: pay them or get put in the spam box with all the links removed.....and about Bellsouth, Verizon, etc. trying to charge web site owners for the "privilege" of being seen or being effectively blocked if they don't pay.

Let's leave the posts and join me (and Common Cause and a few other organizatons) in a viral campaign to get hundreds of thousands of people to write to their congress people for some real legislative action on this. Grouching on these forums will not help!!!! Spreading the word and getting people to make phone calls and send e mails will help.

Here is the page I put on my web site. I am sending that information to my 10,000 plus subscribers in a special edition newsletter very soon.

http://www.happydaycards.com/urgentnews.html

You may copy it and post it as an urgent news items on your own web site also........and copy it and send it out in your own newsletter......and e mail it to everyone you know.

Come one guys and gals. Let's DO SOMETHING! Even if you don't live in the USA and can't write to our legislators, you know folks who do, so send it to them.

__________________
The Weedy Lady at
http://www.happydaycards.com
Free E Cards for holidays and all occasions, fun pages and great recipes.

Personally, I don't see any reason for petitions or government action. As soon as AOL and Yahoo users stop getting mail sent to them, a lot of them will leave for email providers that don't charge for delivery. This is move is all about $$$ and as soon as AOL and Yahoo start to lose customers and lose money they will change their mind.

And in the meantime I will lose a very large percentage of my aol newsletter subscriber list because most of these people won't be able to figure out what is going on.

__________________
The Weedy Lady at
http://www.happydaycards.com
Free E Cards for holidays and all occasions, fun pages and great recipes.

Everyone...

Please consider writing a letter to your Senator and Congressperson. You can find the email address of your representatives at the following two Websites:

For the Senate:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...nators_cfm.cfm

For the House:
www.house.gov/writerep/

__________________
Blog Posts For Sale / Financial Blog
"Ownership has its privileges, you know." - pyramid termite

AOL users already know that they are missing a lot of email. That and the huge amount of their own advertising is causing AOL to lose an estimated 300 customers an hour! Unfortunately, this number would be far higher, if they didn't recruit unsuspecting members, too. So, it will take a little while for them to disappear.

I think you're a bit confused regarding BellSouth (soon to be absorbed by AT&T, resistance is futile) and Verizon. They are charging Google for the amount of bandwidth it uses. Ironically, Google doesn't think it should pay, just receive money for traffic due to clicks. This is different from the average user who already pays their ISP for their bandwidth.

Google, being an advertising partner that owns 5% of AOL is just now realizing what it means to be a publicly traded, for-profit business. Time Warner has had the AOL thorn in its side for sometime and just wanted to share the misery.

Anyway, AOL/Google wants to spam their subscribers with their own ads and will squash anyone else who tries to reach them, even if it is opt-in. Of course, they are doing it "for the children" because they know better than you do.

__________________
DrTandem's San Diego Web Page Design, drtandem.com