Federal Bill 602P will permit the Federal Government to charge a 5-cent charge on every delivered E-mail.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.

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).

The 7 cents per email address bill proposes charging 7 cents to the person that sends the message and 2 cents to the person that receives the email. Tony Schnell (R) suggests combatting online porn through economics and introduces the mesasure above as a first step in a strategy designed to make porn to expenisive to want to deal with.