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 non-interference. 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.
PLEASE
FORWARD!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Dec 07 2001 - 00:36:59 PST