While listening to Adam Curry, on the Daily Source code, the recurring topic of business white listing services came up again.

This involves large e-mail providers like Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and others requiring businesses to purchase white listing services through supposedly independent 3rd party companies to insure delivery of their messages.

For example Hotmail will not talk directly to a business. Instead expecting the business to go to the 3rd party and pay huge fees for their services.

The fees seem to range from a few thousand to 10’s of thousands of dollars.

Adam is right. Today he has no choice but to pay these fees if he wants to guarantee delivery of his businesses e-mail to these providers.

But users need to understand that free e-mail costs us all.

The costs are delayed broken communications and higher prices when businesses have to pay what is extortion in a sense.

Forget DRM, the erosion of e-mail’s usefulness and metering of internet content are the real threats to the Internet as we know it.

Unfortunately, big business doesn’t see the Internet as a universal resource for everyone. It is simply another profit center, where obvious volumes of traffic indicate opportunities.

Though, Adam has to pay for a more obvious reason. His investors would never let his business and their investment be hampered when they can throw cash at the issue.

It is hard to stick to your values when someone else holds the purse strings. When you are an up-n-coming big business.