Ack! Like pretty much everything else on the Internet that asks you to
forward it to all your friends, this is a hoax (and a variant of one that
has been around for a long time). A quick search found mention of it on
this Urban Legends reference page:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/pending/internet.htm
The page talks about 3 versions of the hoax; the one Mr. Stark forwarded is
down at the bottom. Gullibility and e-mail are a bad combination ...
At 11:29 AM 3/22/00 -0500, James W Stark wrote:
>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>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Mar 22 2000 - 11:46:25 EST