Pay-per-email and the "Market Myth"

Bennett Haselton has written a thoughtful piece on the latest developments in the pay-for-email schemes making the rounds from some of the big players in the world of AOL. This one is really worth your time, so please click on and read what he has to say.

This sums up his point in a nutshell:

The problem is that many advocates of these systems say that any flaws will get sorted out automatically by "the market" -- and in this case I think that is simply wrong ... But has the marketplace punished Hotmail for using it? Have people left in droves because non-Bonded-Sender e-mail gets blocked? No, because if they never see it getting blocked they don't know what happens. Free markets only solve problems that are actually visible to the user.

Some good comments after the Slashdot article as well:

I'm on the OpenBSD-security-announce list for example: Where OpenBSD announces when they've found a security bug. I never expect an email from them, but if they send one I want it.

The problem, as they see it, is that if I didn't get an email sent by that list I'd never know. I don't know when or if it was sent. But I still want the email.

This is one of the most common uses of email. It is something spam tries to hide as. A good spam-fighting solution must be able to handle it. Sender-pays doesn't, espcially for small/free projects.

Full disclosure: I am an AOL employee. This is not meant to be an opinion on my part, nor an endoresement of any practice. Any implied opinion is not that of my employer. There, full CYA complete.