Once again, the email service providers (ESPs) are teaming up, to try to convince ISPs to stop filtering their email. A good idea, but unless and until they find a way to compensate ISPs with cold, hard cash, the effort will only be marginally successful in the best case.
Even if the ESPs were willing to compensate ISPs (not likely), I still have my doubts. Almost two years ago I tried to start a company that would facilitate payment of e-postage from ESPs to ISPs. The ESPs hated it, of course. But so did the ISPs, who thought I was asking them to accept money for spam. I tried expalining that the system would only be used for permission-based email, but they didn’t really make a distinction. In their eye, if it’s not 100% confirmed opt-in, it’s spam. Oh well.
(Here’s a link to another story about this in DM News, but it will expire in a couple of weeks.)
(Oops. One more.)