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.

LOL... PT Barnum was right!
http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blnydebate.htm

Don't know if Doc is pulling our legs or if he just reported some information he received. Either way, this is a hoax that has been traveling the internet for some months. Below is a quote from a House Reps. webpage, the link is at the bottom of this post.

"As you may know, it was reported that a "Congressman Tony Schnell" recently introduced "Bill 602P," which would
allow the federal government to impose a five-cent surcharge on every e-mail sent.  The money collected through this
surcharge would be given to the United States Postal Service.  This rumor has been widely spread via e-mail
throughout the country.

This rumor is absolutely false.  No such legislation exists.  In fact, no "Congressman Tony Schnell" exists.  The Postal
Service has no authority to collect fees for e-mail, and has indicated that it would not support legislation to allow such
fees to be imposed.  You can find more information about this rumor at the Postal Service's website,
http://www.usps.com. "

The federal government will NEVER pass legislation that would in any way inconvenience its members.  The real challenge would be in the manner in which to implement the proposal.

Just another dirty political trick by some lefty, portraying the bad guy as a Republican (note how he tries to slip that in twice) and the hero as a lawyer.

Why can't these guys argue their viewpoint intelligently instead of trying to alarm and trick the rest of us?