Remember all those hokey e-mail forwards promising that random company X would donate Y dollars per e-mails forwarded to random charity Z? Many of them touted some fancy new e-mail tracking system that Bill Gates was testing, an idea that made real techies laugh and newbies ponder the quick buck they could earn. We all laugh now and think it’s an e-mail gimmick of the past that will no doubt crop up again and again.

Well guess what? It’s back. And it’s for real. Univeral Pictures is donating $1 to Partnership for a Drug Free America for every e-mail you send advertising the movie Traffic‘s debut on Pay-Per View–up to $50,000. And from everything I can tell, it’s legit.

You send the e-mail from a form on their site, so they can track everything. And they put a cap on it, so it doesn’t get out of hand. To top it off, they’re promoting a really good movie (admittedly, they’re hyping a really lame promotion–how many people actually watch movies on Pay-Per View?). So why not send an e-mail to a friend? Go for it.