Some in the trade press along with left wing activist group MoveOn.org have gone positively cuckoo over a statement Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras made to California legislators in a hearing concerning AOL’s implementation of CertifiedEmail:
"To suggest that the introduction of CertifiedEmail is going to prevent spammers from sending spam or phishers from trying to phish -- we have not said it, nor would any expert say it,” Gingras reportedly said to California State Sen. Dean Florez.
MoveOn.org’s Adam Green reportedly told ClickZ blogger Kate Kaye that the statement is proof that AOL has been lying about its plans.
“Goodmail was forced to admit publicly that AOL’s pay-to-send system would do nothing to prevent spam,” Green wrote. “Goodmail’s admission debunked one of the prime lies that AOL has been telling the media and the public for the last month, and blew a hole right through AOL’s credibility and every single promise they’ve made to the public in this debate. Their days of saying ‘trust us, we won’t hurt email’ are over – their trust is gone.”
What about Gingras’ statement is so difficult for the Adam Green’s of this world to understand?
Gingras didn’t say CertifiedEmail will do nothing to prevent spam. He said it won’t prevent it. Those two statements mean completely different things, which means if Green’s interpretation is to be taken at face value, he is either intellectually dishonest or a dimwit.
We would bet on the former.
But for anyone who needs further clarification, like say, state lawmakers in Utah and Michigan, Gingras told Magilla Marketing in an e-mail:
“Senator Florez asked me if CertfiedEmail was going to eliminate the spam problem. We have never suggested it would achieve that objective.
“CertifiedEmail is designed to allow accredited senders to send secure CertifiedEmail messages to recipients who have agreed to receive those messages.
“There is nothing in what we do that is going to stop the spammer in Belarus or the phisher in Ecuador from continuing their nefarious efforts to send unsolicited and/or fraudulent messages.”
E-mail authentication won’t prevent spam either, but it is a weapon in the fight against unsolicited e-mail. No one thought the Can Spam Act would prevent spam. It is simply another weapon. Are people really so stupid that they need this explained to them?
We honestly have no opinion over whether Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail service will be good for e-mail. And frankly, we don’t have a high opinion of AOL’s service. It’s Internet access with training wheels.
But we’re getting sick to death of people who think they should be able to dictate AOL’s business decisions.
Politics aside, MoveOn.org should live up to its name on this issue. It has no credibility as long as Green engages in the kind of selective misquoting he has done at least twice now: once with Esther Dyson’s recent editorial in the New York Times and now with Gingras.
