Hardly!
There is a lot of concern — read opposition in many corners — to a plan by AOL and Yahoo to charge marketers who send bulk emails, be it special offers from L.L. Bean, Target or Buy.com that you might have asked for … or all those you didn’t want to get.
For a quick look at the issue, see this Forbes article.
But these moves by Yahoo and AOL probably will impact legit emailers more than spammers. The spammers, of course, will figure a way around it before it’s implemented; the legit emailers will see their cost of doing business rise and the consumer will wonder why their box is crammed with junk mail.
Not the end of e-mail, but hardly progress.
Update: An Electronic Frontier Foundation piece.