Disclaimer: I know that this is only an Urban Legend with no basis in reality. But could it happen?
I always used to ask this too, but the OP says
Sounds to me like the feds would audit each ISP to see how many emails they got from their customers. As each customer sends an email for the ISP to send to the Internet, the ISPs would tally them up and send 5c each to the govt, and they would collect it from each customer.
Sounds to me identical to how Sales Tax is collected. Is there anything inherently impossible or illegal about this? This would also apply to web-based sites (HotMail, et al) who would then be forced to institute some kind of billing system if only to recoup the taxes. It would mean the death of most email (including spam, happily) but there’s nothing impossible about it is there?
Da Ace and sandyr - Re: e-commerce vs. mail order. the difference should not be measured in amount of sales, but in number of shipments. Lillian Vernon may in fact do scads of business measured by sales, but the shipper makes their money based on the number of packages and weight therein.
OK, so I don’t have my facts straight on e-commerce v. mail order. Thanks for the info. However, I think I’m right on in stating that widespread internet use is good for the USPS, and doing anything to discourage internet use would be bad for the USPS. So even if they could tax e-mail (which they can’t), they wouldn’t want to.
Just an observation: The people who actually believed this (not Scylla, who had the sense to ask) have absolutely no idea of how the internet works. That ‘Ugandan email’ scenario is a perfect example of that. The internet is just a collection of smaller networks that share technical standards. No centralization, no governing body. Trying to ‘regulate’ it is as silly and as futile as trying to get Saddam Hussein to appear in an American court of his own will. Our laws simply do not apply to most of the world.
ISPs don’t deliver e-mails, we move bits. We have absolutely no interest in knowing whether said bits are JPEGs, e-mails, MP3s or posts to SDMB. Looking into every IP packet to find out “oh, this is an e-mail, this is a file transfer, this is a telnet connection” is only possible to a very limited degree, mainly because it takes lots of CPU power, and our equipment was designed to move packets fast, based on their addresses and not much else.
(This is the reason most networking professionals snort at the idea of the ECHELON wiretap system, but that’s another story.)
Of course, I’m working for a German ISP and would be happy to fart in the general direction of any US law of this character, anyway
Derleth, I do understand how the internet works, that is why I asked the question. When I said based in Uganda, I was referring to the ISP being based there. Someone had stated that the government could charge each ISP for each message sent. If a governing body wanted to charge the ISP for each message, then they could only charge those providers based in their country. How could they enforce US law on a foreign company. That was the point of my message.
The Post Office is no more hurt by the increasing volume of E-mail than it was one hundred years ago by the increasing number of telephone calls. There’s no evidence that any new communication system is likely to elininate any old communication system. That’s why every evening when I get home from work, I still have to sort a pile of mail, check my answering machine for calls, and go online to check my E-mail. How about we eliminate mail, the telephone, and the Internet so I can get something done in the evening?
When I get home from work I check my e-mail, read my mail, bang out some correspondence via telegraph, and put together a string of beads to have someone run over to the next village with. Or that’s what I would do if new communication systems didn’t replace old ones.
People still send telegrams, although not as much as they used to. They also still send faxes, write books, publish newspapers, have documents delivered by messenger, talk to each other over ham radio and walkie-talkies, and, using the most shockingly old-fashioned communication method of all, talk to other people face to face. When did anyone ever communicate with beads? Yeah, O.K., occasionally certain communication systems do go out of use or at least become less common, but the point is that communication isn’t a zero-sum game. The fact that one system is becoming more common doesn’t necessarily mean that some other system is becoming less common.
When are telegrams used? The closest I can think of is Radio Teletype (RTTY to the hams), which is mechanical (machine code, not Morse code) and done at a very high speed (I forget the baud, but to those listening to a transmission it is impossible to hear it as anything other than a nearly-continuous sound). Old Morse code is only used in amateur radio (a hobbyist’s pursuit) and in a few other limited applications where satellites are too expensive and reception is too bad for voice to be an option. In short, the telegraph, even the radio telegraph, is all but dead. True, snail mail is still viable but as the internet becomes more widespread I can’t see it as going anywhere but down. I think faxes will go the same way, if only because bandwidth is getting cheaper.
IIRC, Native Americans had a primitive communication system based on strings of beads.
Also, Western Union might still send “telegrams”, but I seriously doubt that they have telegraph operators sending these messages using morse code. I could be wrong, but if that’s the way they’re still doing it, they’re doing it the hard way.
The e-mail tax urban legend has found its way into the Clinton-Lazio debates; they’re both agin it, apparently without recognizing it as a hoax: E-mail hoax makes it into New York Senate debate.
