Guest Editorial

Stamps for your Email
Douglas Myers
1:270/720
DougM@paonline.com

If you hold your ear very close to your POP3 server, you can hear the roar of an ocean of injustice. Is the government reading your email? Will the telephone company be able to charge you long distance surcharges for your data connections? Will your ISP be required to limit your selections on the web?

This week's email sounded a clarion call alerting me the the latest attempt to trample my personal freedoms:

----- excerpt from email -----

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.
..
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.
..
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.

-------- end excerpt ---------

To save space, I've not included the usual rhetoric about the efficiency of the post office and the federal government in general, nor the dire warnings about giving the government a foothold to strip us of a free internet. It is presumed that the reader is already familiar with the concept.

The letter did go on to say that all major newspapers are ignoring the story, so I thought I'd address it in Fidonews :)

To begin with, I'm not sure that there is a Bill 602P - sometimes these letters don't restrict themselves to the facts. But if there is a Bill 602P, it won't recover the USPS' lost revenues - if the post office is losing $0.33 per letter and only recovering $0.05 per letter, then it's only going to recover about $35 million of its lost $230 million. This is a figure almost beneath Uncle Sam's notice... unless he takes the following two steps to bolster revenue significantly:

1. Surcharge email received rather than email sent. This would have the double benefit encouraging spammers to work for free as agents of the United States Government as well as drawing significant revenue from folks with an email account who just aren't creative enough to write much.
2. Consider newsgroups to be email. The ALT groups alone could wipe out the national debt! Of course, if the concept were extended to include echomail, then the Zone 1 Backbone would be scrambling to recover all those echoes they've dropped, as low volume echoes would suddenly be in vogue.

In calculating lost revenues, the Post Office needs to look beyond email to other forms of communication. For example, Postal Inspectors could walk into the Churches and Synagogues and Temples of our nation and surcharge all those prayers to God. None of them bear a postage stamp, to the best of my knowledge. Better yet, they could surcharge prayers at home - three meals per day and bedtime prayers. Compliance with this latter is expected to be high... after all, would YOU be willing to tell the government that you don't say your prayers at beddy-bye?

And the Postal Inspectors could march into the singles bars throughout the land on the alert for body language. After all, it all goes unstamped except for possibly an occasional woman who's been hit upon one too many times. Of course, Postal Inspectors are a dry lot and might miss some of the body language. Perhaps it's time for a new concept here: outcome-based surcharing. For example, a man or woman who draws a smile could be charged for one letter. A whistle would be worth three letters. If one actually scores, he or she could appeal for bulk rate.

Pay attention to the roar of the ocean in your mailbox... you just never know what's going to wash ashore...