Read this if you play by email

[Atrocities]

quote:

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Please read and forward: This affects us all!

Guess the warnings were true. Federal Bill 602P 5-cents per E-mail sent. It
figures! No more free E-mail! We knew this was coming!! Bill 602P will
permit the Federal Government to charge a 5-cent charge on every delivered
E-mail. Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay Online
and continue using E-mail.

The Last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of the
United States attempting to quietly push
through legislation that will affect our use of the Internet.

Under proposed legislation, the US Postal Service will be attempting to bill
E-mail Users out of "alternative postage fees."

Bill 602P will permit the Federal Government to charge a 5-cent surcharge on
every e-mail delivered, by billing Internet Service Providers at source.

The consumer would then be billed in turn by the ISP.
Washington DC lawyer Richard Stepp is working without pay to prevent this
legislation from becoming law. The US Postal Service is claiming lost
revenue, due to the proliferation of E-mail, is costing nearly $230,000,000
in revenue per year. You may have noticed their recent ad campaign:
"There is nothing like a letter."

Since the average person received about 10 pieces of E-mail per day in 1998,
the cost of the typical individual would be an additional 50 cents a day --
or over $180 per year -- above and beyond their regular Internet costs.

Note that this would be money paid directly to the US Postal Service for a
service they do not even provide.

The whole point of the Internet is democracy and noninterference. You are
already paying an exorbitant price for snail mail because of bureaucratic
inefficiency. It currently takes up to 6 days for a letter to be delivered
from coast to coast. If the US Postal Service is allowed to tinker with
E-mail, it will mark the end of the "free"
Internet in the United States.

Congressional representative, Tony Schnell (R) has even suggested a "$20-$40
per month surcharge on all Internet service" above and beyond the governments
proposed E-mail charges. Note that most of the major newspapers have ignored
the story the only exception being the Washingtonian which called the idea of
E-mail surcharge "a useful concept who's time has come" (March 6th, 1999
Editorial). Do not sit by and watch your freedom erode away!

Send this E-mail to EVERYONE on your list, and tell all your friends and
relatives to write their congressional representative and say "NO" to Bill
602P.

It will only take a few moments of your time and could very well be
instrumental in killing a bill we do not want.

---

If this is to be believed, then I guess we have a big problem.

[This message has been edited by Atrocities (edited 15 August 2001).]

[Alpha Kodiak]

I believe this is a hoax, as I was unable to find any reference to Bill 602P or any reference to e-mail in regards to charging postage using the Bill Search on the U.S. Senate site. Variations on this hoax have been going around for a long time.

If anyone has any concrete information on this bill that I missed (a distinct possibility) please post it. Otherwise, it is safe to assume that this is one more rendition of an old hoax.

[Atrocities]

I also could not find anything, but still, its a clever hoax, and if we are not careful, this hoax, if indeed it is one, could become a reality right under our noses.

"Fear not the lie, but the lie that becomes truth." - Unkown.

[This message has been edited by Atrocities (edited 15 August 2001).]

[Hotfoot]

Two words: Cow Pies.

The government can't charge for emails, and if they even tried, I wish them good luck on trying to figure out just which packets are e-mail, which are instant Messages, which are GET and POST commands from webservers, which are message Boards, and which are multiplayer games. And what about lost packets? Would they tax those too? They take up bandwidth, but never reach their destination.

It might sound plausible to tax the internet like that, but unless the government COMPLETELY changes the way the net is structured and how it functions, it's not going to happen. And since the net is international, they would have to coerce EVERY major internet-using goverment into going along with these changes, or risk essentially creating an national intranet out of America's current internet.

The concern about keeping the net relatively free, however, is a legitimate one. We could go back to paying by how many hours or minutes we spend Online, or maybe even by how many packets are successfully transferred. And the net could become regulated by censor after censor. I don't know how many of you follow Everquest, but a while back there was a player who was Banned from the game for writing and posting fan-fiction that many people considered to be offensive (it involved slavery and torture). While we don't pay for play here like on Everquest, the nature of these forums could be made (and I'm not saying they will ever be) so that anyone posting such sick ideas as a genocidal war and glorifying it in fiction will be Banned, their Posts deleted, and their parents emailed on the subject.

Anyway, it's all a question of control or freedom. Freedom leads to chaos, control leads to stagnation. We have to decide upon a middle ground that works for everyone.

-Hotfoot
"Serious concepts, realized in fantasy."

[Will]

All taxing and appropriations bills (this would be one) must start in the House of Representatives, and the bill's name will take the form of HR#, with # being a number.

Also, the federal government has no authority to track, let alone charge, for e-mails sent. This is just another hoax to get a lot of people riled up for nothing.

There is an article floating around somewhere that details exactly how to determine if an alarming e-mail is a hoax, but a basic rundown: If it involves the government taxing you for using internet services, you or a charity recieving money for forwarding, or any incentive for forwarding, it's a hoax.

[disabled]

Chain letters... Bah!

The power to tax is the power to destroy!

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HADRIAN AVENTINE
pacea@solar-outpost.com
http://www.hyperionbase.com