Following the rant about the “COPE act” I felt the need to say my two pence as well.

What an insane idea this is. Sadly it is self defeating to a large extent. If email is now first and second class then eventually it will either break down – as every email provider pays to have their email first class, or when everyone realises that AOL produce no decent mail (ever) and just block their systems – or email will become superceded.

Email is one of the “Killer Applications” of the internet. It was one the first and has well and truly out lived the others. Is there anyone who remembers gopher: urls for instance? As people are now getting obsessive about using Blackberry and the like, charging the end user for email would be insane.

Not to mention the problems for cross border issues. Can a (for example) Russian company sue an American ISP for delayng its email? Will return gestures be implemented? When an email passes over the GLOBAL internet, how can any one organisation try to charge for anything other than the very last bit of the loop?

All in all, another badly thought out law passed by the steadily more insane US government.

Welcome to 1984, sorry its a bit late.