NIGHTMARE!

UNKNOWNDUDE

Banned
Aug 14, 2000
2,095
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VOTE NO ON Bill 602P!!!!

I 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 efficiency. 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. Our congressional representative,
Tony Schnell ? 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
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.

Please forward!
 

Pastore

Diamond Member
Feb 9, 2000
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Bump, and this is absolutely horrible...

BTW, change the thread title, i almost didnt read it because it just said "NIGHTMARE!"
 

Pretender

Banned
Mar 14, 2000
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OH NO HOLY CRIMINY PLEASE SAVE ME FROM THE HORRIBLE CHAIN LETTER ITS A NIGHTMARE!!!?!?!?!!!!!1111
 

syzygy

Diamond Member
Feb 5, 2001
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this is madness. if this is all true, how come there's only one pro bono attorney
working against ? i would think the isps would fight such a fedral imposition of
fees, unless they are all in collusion to accept the fees. congress even held
hearings, chaired by orrin hatch, sympathetic to napster, and now they are
drafting legislation to prop up the us postal service by jamming e-mail
'stamps' down each isp. need more info. do you have any more ?
 

guyver01

Lifer
Sep 25, 2000
22,135
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Federal Bill 602P

That is *NOT* how bills are named... that for one clues you in that it's a fake.
<sheesh> and from a golden member too.. makes me ashamed to have the monicker now
 

syzygy

Diamond Member
Feb 5, 2001
3,038
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good limk. figured there was something a tad nonsensical about the original post.
the dude needs to bone up on the manuals and spin off more believable hoaxes. he he.
hint: concentrate on the logic.
 

Pretender

Banned
Mar 14, 2000
7,192
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the funny thing is, if you know how the internet works, you'd realize it's impossible to charge per e-mail. Software and other forms of email services could be written using other ports or protocols, and the government would be slow as hell picking these things up and writing new bills to tax them. Anyone who spends a minute to think would realize - hmm, how the hell are they going to find every single email address in existance and find out the owner, and tax them. And what about people with foreign email addresses?
 

Pastore

Diamond Member
Feb 9, 2000
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pretender... your telling me your isp cant keep track of the emails that you send? well, they can... what they are saying is that you cant have email services such as yahoo, or hotmail anymore, and the only email addresses you can have will be through your isp
 

Pretender

Banned
Mar 14, 2000
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In this message, I'm speaking as if the bill exists. We know it's fake, but this is hypothetical


<< pretender... your telling me your isp cant keep track of the emails that you send? well, they can... what they are saying is that you cant have email services such as yahoo, or hotmail anymore, and the only email addresses you can have will be through your isp >>


Sure, if you're sending email using your ISP's email service, of cource they can.

If you use a foreign mail server to send and receive email (since this bill would only affect US email servers), then they'd have no way to know unless the ISP examines every single packet going through it.

Besides, with alternate ways to send messages (AIM, ICQ, etc), it would be futile. Besides, what's to stop someone from coming up with a new email protocol using different TCP ports, and maybe incompatible with the old software so it wouldn't be affected by the bill? Sure, they could write another bill, but it would take time.

And as you mentioned, free email services, both in and out of the country would screw up the bill. For those within the US, they'd have to either start asking for credit card info which means people would stop using it, or they'd bite the cost themselves and take it out of their ad revenue, in which case we wouldn't care. As for foreign services, the US would have no way to force them to forward the information about who's using their service so they could tax us.

Too many ways to beat the system, the government wouldn't stand a chance.
 

syzygy

Diamond Member
Feb 5, 2001
3,038
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pretender, from my understanding, the tax would not be directly levied on individual
users, but charged to you and me through the isps, who would first have to suffer the
humiliation of publicly agreeing to wholesale federal imposition of fees. the isp would
then monitor and log the mail daemons and hit you every time you sent an email.