Brian :
Thank you so much for the voice of reason ! This rumor is getting to be
one of the worst email hoaxes !
In fact, Congress passed a law last year that makes it illegal to tax the
Internet in any way until 2003 ! One of the bills that prompts these
periodic scares is to make that injunction permanent.
So, by telling your congressman to vote "No", you are actually taking a
chance on his making the wrong vote !
Another proposal from the FCC, which may be the one your congressman was
referring to, was to change the way that the money you pay for basic phone
service is split among the phone companies. Seems that, when the subject
of who gets what money when a local call crosses carriers came up, the baby
bells lobbied long and hard to receive a fee when they completed a local
call. However, some of the new phone companies figured out that, by
catering exclusively to ISP's, they could cash in on this (since ISP's
never place calls, only receive them). So, the proposal was to do away
with the fee paid to the LEC who completed a call. IMO, this was a good
idea, which was shot down by the huge public outcry over "taxing the
Internet".
Randall
On Tuesday, March 16, 1999 6:50 PM, Brian Furgalus
[SMTP:triumph.tr7@usa.net] wrote:
>
> I don't know if you guys caught this same thing earlier, but I did, and
> got sucked into it, and DID write my congressman. I got a response BY
> MAIL, saying that the FCC had proposed a tax on internet access LAST
> YEAR, I believe, but due to the public outcry, it was shot down. My
> only guess is that this is a very old chain email that needs to be
> killed! So don't bother writing your representative, you'll get the
> same response, guaranteed! Not to mention they might think you're a
> little crazy...
>
> Later
> Brian
>
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