Dear all, Looks like I fell for an urban legend.  Please disregard the
dire warning sent to you yesterday.
John Argue
---------------------------
Forward:
Subject:  Fwd: HOAX: Internet Tax!

 Joan and Mary,

Please see the attached material on the "Internet tax".  It turns out
this is
a hoax.  Please pass this information on to the ones who forwarded you
the
original email.

Hope all is well with you,
Norman.

*****************************************************************
Norman Mau                   Internet:  [log in to unmask]
Technical Specialist          Address:  500 Oracle Parkway M/S 3op11
MPP/PPS Support                         Redwood Shores, CA 94065
Oracle WorldWide Support

snip - dire warning of congressional long distance charges!

Origins: As soon as we find something we really like, we become afraid
that
one (or both) of two things will happen: the government will take it
away, or
whoever supplies it will jack up the price. The Internet is no
exception, as
our old friend -- the capitalized, exclamation pointed, "send this to
everyone
you know" anonymous e-mail message -- is here to tell you.
Way back when in 1987, the Federal Communications Commission did
consider
imposing a surcharge for transmitting data over the public telephone
network,
but they ultimately rejected the idea (thanks in part to the more than
10,000
letters of complaint they received). Unable to believe our good fortune
(the
government wasn't going to make us pay through the nose for dialing up
all
those neat computer bulletin boards we'd discovered), we couldn't leave
well
enough alone, and in 1991 a flood of urgent messages warning us that the
FCC
was again considering a proposal they'd rejected three years earlier hit
e-mail systems all over the country (and the nascently popular
Internet). Like
the ubiquitous Craig Shergold message, the "modem tax" warning would
long
outlive the validity of the information it conveyed.
Fast forward to 1998. On-line services, the Internet, the World Wide
Web,
e-mail, and chat rooms are more popular than ever, a daily part of many
people's lives. Somebody -- the government, the phone companies, Bill
Gates,
the Grinch -- must be on his way to spoil the party. Sure enough, we're
now
being told the phone companies and the goverment are in cahoots to ruin
our
good time. Not.
First of all, a little background. Most of us still have to dial up over
a
modem and connect to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to access the
Internet. If your ISP is in your local dialing area, you probably don't
pay
anything at all for the call, no matter how long you stay connected.
Even if
your phone company has you on a plan where you pay for local calls, you
probably still only pay a minimal charge for the call, regardless of the
length of the connection. This means you get to tie up the phone line
with
your modem for hours and hours on end without being charged extra. And
the
party at the other end of the line -- your ISP -- isn't paying anything
extra,
either. It's easy to see that the phone companies are sitting on a
goldmine,
if they could only impose some extra fees for all this use of their
lines. How
about this: what if the phone companies handled Internet traffic like
long
distance calls and made your or your ISP pay per minute for the use of
their
phone lines? What a bonanza! Scary thought, isn't it? All the phone
companies
need, we're told, is to get the FCC to reclassify and/or regulate ISPs,
and
then the phone companies can charge gobs of extra money for handling
Internet
traffic.
Not to worry -- it ain't gonna happen. There is no such proposal before
Congress, and there never has been.
The only real issue before the FCC concerning Internet usage (and the
apparent
genesis of this latest round of scaremongering) is the subject of
"reciprocal
compensation." In short, reciprocal compensation means that if you place
a
local call to someone who is serviced by a different phone company, your
phone
company has to compensate his phone company for completing the call. If
the
"person" you're calling is an ISP, should your phone company have to
compensate the ISP's phone company? The matter is still under dispute,
but its
resolution is unlikely to affect the average Internet user, because most
states require phone companies to charge a flat rate for unlimited local
usage. Even if your phone company had to start paying compensation
whenever
you dialed up an ISP, they still couldn't charge you any more for
calling an
ISP than for calling another person.
Nonetheless, the misinterpretation that the FCC is going to impose
surcharges
for "Internet usage" has been "netsam" for so long now that the chairman
of
the Federal Communications Commission addressed it in a speech on 11
November
1998, stating:
For reasons that escape me, there are those who regularly suggest that
the FCC
is considering the imposition of per minute charges on Internet
providers. The
forces behind these rumors are doing a disservice to the American
consumer,
because in fact nothing could be further from the truth. But somehow
these
rumors keep arising, often on the Internet itself. I know, because I
receive
hundreds and thousands of e-mails every time this rumor arises.
I know that many of the e-mails I receive are from well-meaning, but
misinformed, people who are concerned about the future of the Internet.
I
applaud their vigilance and I am glad to assure them that the FCC is not
about
to impose per minute charges on the Internet.
CNN's part in this scare (if you can't trust CNN, who can you trust?) is
even
murkier. They did run a story about the alleged proposal on 7 November
1998,
but the story contained nothing more substantive than statements from
various
media and businesspeople about what a terrible thing it would be if the
proposal were to pass. That there is no such proposal apparently escaped
their
fact checking apparatus.
Additional information:
FCC Fact Sheet
CNN Report on Internet Charges
Speech by FCC Chairman
Last updated: 12 January 1999

Urban Legends Reference Pages (c) 1995-1999 by Barbara and David P.
Mikkelson