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IP: Clinton ratifies Illegal Internet Tax - bad day for US high
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 19:26:06 -0400
I can not vouch for this item but it sounds right and Gordon is usually right in facts. It is a sad day . Expect to see a lot more taxes levied on network access and services if this stands. Remember it was levied by a Federal agency without the Congress. Don't you think we will see more of this can any self respecting foreign government not take lessons from this trick. And the states!! What ever happened to no Internet Taxes. Yes it will be claimed it is to avoid NSI getting the money or it is too small to bear the expenses of refund or etc etc etc. But it is a tax and damn regressive. I paid 15 bucks extra and so did Microsoft. For the record I do not necessarily agree with Gordon forecast but I promised i would not snip his stuff. Dave Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 17:04:09 -0400 From: Gordon Cook <cook () cookreport com> At least Bode doesn't get rich from his ill advised suit.. SEC. 8003. RATIFICATION OF INTERNET INTELLECTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE FEE. (a) The 30 percent portion of the fee charged by Network Solutions, Inc. between September 14, 1995 and March 31, 1998 for registration or renewal of an Internet second-level domain name, which portion was to be expended for the preservation and enhancement of the intellectual infrastructure of the Internet under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, and which portion was held to have been collected without authority in William Thomas et al. v. Network Solutions, Inc. and National Science Foundation, Civ. No. 97-2412, is hereby legalized and ratified and confirmed as fully to all intents and purposes as if the same had, by prior Act of Congress, been specifically authorized and directed. (b) The National Science Foundation is authorized and directed to deposit all money remaining in the Internet Intellectual Infrastructure Fund into the Treasury and credit thatamount to its Fiscal Year 1998 Research and Related Activities appropriation to be available until expended for the support of networking activities, including the Next Generation Internet. A few questions. IS UCAID is sitting pretty now? Will most of the $50 million go to hook up Abeline? When CANADA is going with an all optical and zero SONET research network, the press should be well advised to ask Doug van Howelling why Abeline is starting off SONET? The only answer that occurs to me is that Abeline wants federally subsidized reliable high bandwitdh for university PRODUCTION USES. In the meantime the ultimate irony is that the 30% DNS surcharge helps fund plain vanilla high speed university connections while CANARIE does the all optical network which the US lacks the leadership to do. OF course it is to be hoped that NSF will refuse to use any of this money for support of Abeline. so while the congress doesn't expost facto ratify the illegal tax, the president does..... Poor precedent! And the US makes the wrong network research choices by banking on expensive SONET and leaving CANARIE to develop first SONETless net using TCP/IP over WDM......
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- IP: Clinton ratifies Illegal Internet Tax - bad day for US high Dave Farber (May 01)