Do we all want to pay for every e-mail we send? Read on.
Jim Stark
<In a message dated 03/20/00 10:01:42 PM Eastern Standard Time, LucyReeves
writes:
Subject: US Stamps forE-mails
Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay on-line
and continue using email: 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 your use of the Internet. Under proposed
legislation, the U.S. Postal Service will be
attempting to bill email users out of "alternate postage fees".
Bill 602P will permit the Federal Govt. to charge a 5 cent surcharge on
every
email 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 U.S. Postal Service
is claiming that lost revenue due to the proliferation of email 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 citizen received about 10 pieces of email per
day
in 1998, the cost to the typical individual would be an additional 50 cents
per day or over $180 dollars per year, above and beyond their regular
Internet costs.
NOTE that this would be money paid directly to the U.S. Postal
Service for a service they DO NOT EVEN provide. The whole point of the
Internet is democracy and noninterference. If the federal government is
permitted to tamper with our liberties by adding a surcharge to email, who
knows where it will end. 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 New York to Buffalo. If the U.S. Postal
Service is allowed to tinker with email, it will mark the end of the "free"
Internet in the US.
One congressman, Tony Schnell R has even suggested a "twenty to forty dollar
per month surcharge on all Internet service" above and beyond the
government's proposed email charges. Note that most of the major newspapers
have ignored the story, the only exception being the Washingtonian which
called the idea of email surcharge "a useful concept whose time has come"
(March 6th 1999 Editorial)
Don't sit by and watch your freedom erode away! Send this email to all
Americans on your list and tell your friends and relatives and say "No!" to
Bill 602P.
Kate Turner, Assistant to
Richard Stepp, Berger, Stepp and
Gorman Attorneys at Law
216 Concorde Street, Vienna, VA>
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