Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online 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 bilk 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 D.C.
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 non-interference.  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 efficiency 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 United States.   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 ignore






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