IP: Clinton ratifies Illegal Internet Tax - bad day for US high

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

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......