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The E-mail Tax Hoax Meets The Candidates
senort01 writes: "Who couldn't find this humorous? 602P, (the post office will charge for e-mail being sent to make up for lost revenue), a classic Internet hoax, was asked about in the New York Senate debate. Needless to say, both parties aren't going to support it! Thank god!" And for those who prefer their news both more direct and more fun, ContinuousPark writes: "Declan McCullagh's Politechbot mailing list is reporting that the lame e-mail hoax made it into the Clinton-Lazio debate." the_quark helpfully points out not only the famous Bill 602P itself but the USPS's stock page denying its existence.
This CNN article doesn't give many details, but apparently the question was submitted online for the debate. Whoever was in charge of screening/selecting those questions is probably a little nervous about going to work tomorrow morning...
...is that this hoax is believable. Precedants such as the Communications Decency Act and other obviously unconstitutional laws get passed, so why wouldn't this be proposed?
I mean, look at the congressional response to the OK City bombing. They passed "domestic terrorism legislation". Well Hello!!! The last time I checked, it was already illegal to set off a bomb and kill over 100 people. What do we need these laws for?
I swear, if by some quirk of fate I ever end up in congress, I will *never* vote for such a stupid, idiotic, redundant POS. If anybody asks me why, I'll just smile and say that there was heavy pressure from the pro domestic terrorism lobbying groups.
Ok... actually, now that I come to think of it... it was probably a rider on some other bill which was important. That's the cruddy thing about just about all bills. They are all like... Mozilla. Can't just have a browser bill, gotta attach an LDAP rider, a news clause, and some additional mail legislation.
So, I couldn't vote against the bill; but I'd make a scene on C-SPAN.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Who the HELL have I been paying my 5 cents to?!?!!
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
And an old but, but a classic, RFC #748 which details several "new" Telnet options to facilitate random data/service losses.
I should probably point out that all of those were submitted on April 1st and are actual RFCs that are archived on the Internet Engineering Task Force's webpage. I've got a longer list, should anyone care, but I've got to pick and choose...
The only point to this is that some real RFC's turn out to be hoaxes, in a way! Hope people find those funny. If not, then you should try and implement TCP/IP as described in RFC #1217. Either that or try RFC #2549 - it was discovered that Linux could not implement it because penguins can't fly.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
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Every e-mail is taxed with 10 cents ($1 for messages > 50k), which the receiver can or cannot collect.
Now, if friends or business associates send me mail, I sure won't collect. But I sure as hell collect on every piece of fscking junk sent into my general direction.
Today it's essentially free (or very cheap) to send 3'000'000 of those Hot pr0n, just click here messages. Now if half the recepients collect 10 cents the spammer is suddenly out of $150'000, which hurts.
Also those marketing geniuses which figure that their 3 Meg PowerPoint presentation is of interest to half the company would certainly think twice before pestering us again.
Of course the micro payment infrastructure is not here yet, further refinements have to be applied, etc...
But thinking about it, it's not that bad an idea to finally get rid of SPAM.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
If someone started talking to me about IETF RCS1532, or PCS1532 I would assume they are not an expert and got the name wrong (possably including the numbers).
I don't see why congressmen think the public is any smarter. Especally when they keep passing laws the remove our need to think for ourselves.
I would be a paid subscriber if Taco and Hemos weren't such cunts
I got hit by another Canadian email virus
The newfie virus
This virus works on the honour system. Please delete everything on your hard disk then forward this message to everyone on your mailing list.
After I deleted everthing on my hard disk I couldn't send out the required email
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I just want to ask all the people who think the politicians are stupid for not knowing that 602P is not a real bill to please inform me off the top of their heads what the titles of the following RFCs are: 1999, 2012, 3002, and 6521. If you can't tell what they are or even better can't figure out which ones are fake and which are real then what business do you have expecting politicians to know about all the bills being proposed to congress, especially since most bills are handled by specialized committees and rarely are heard by all of congress unless they have massive support.
Second Law of Blissful Ignorance
PT Barnum was an optimist.
The real enemy here is the "two-party system." First of all, in the US, political parties don't really even exist. Second, there are many, many more than merely two of them, and most are much friendlier to the interests of sanity than the Demoblicans and Republicrats. Stop buying into the idea that there are only two parties, or that party affiliation even matters. Bottom line: the two largest political parties are identical and have only one mission: to maintain and increase their own power. You can't count on either of their loyalty, either to your business or the interests of general justice and rationality. The instant some big special interest drops a million for some idiotic proposal, they'll both pull an about-face in the interests of money and power.
Value your freedom? Vote against the two major parties.
Hillary proved to be the smart one by her
response while Lazio choose to look like a
moron with his. Lazio automatically assumed that
this was a real bill in congress and started
bashing on the governement while Hilary was
puzzled by the bizarre bill that she'd never
heard of.
Don't worry, there are plenty of politicians
who are well aware of that phony bill, or at
least their secretaries are.
There was an article I read in the Grand Rapids
newspaper (Michigan) where they explained that
that phony bill got some phone lines jammed.
There were more angry calls about this bill
than people bitching at the President during
the hypocrite republican's vendetta against
the president for his blowjobs.
If you check out WCBS' web article about the debate, you'll notice not a single reference to the 602P hoax. On their message boards, however, a couple of people are screaming for the head of the moderator, "Chief Investigative/Political Reporter for NEWS 2" Marcia Kramer.
My spider-sense tells me the Don Imus show (on sister station WFAN-AM) is going to have a field day tomorrow. I guess WCBS doesn't feel their own screwups are worth correcting.
Agreed... I've had that particular email sent to me by some bright friends who weren't so bright when it came to computers...
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I'm a NY resident and vehemently against Her Royal Highness for many reasons. I watched the debate this morning, though I admit I was half out of it due to being sick, and I remember her talking about the moritorium on internet taxation as part of her response to this question... To paraphrase, she said she wasn't in favor of taxation right now - she would like to continue the with moratorium so that access can be provided to as many people as possible and re-evaluate the situation later. Like I said, I'm admittedly biased against her, but to me, this smacks of "let it become really popular and then once most people depend on it, we can tax a broader base to generate money for new (bloated|wasteful) program X." It's not like the government doesn't already tax necessary utilities to generate revenue for certain programs.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Yes, 602P is a fake - but that doesn't stop our good samaritans on Capitol Hill from fighting against it just the same. Our stalwart guardians of justice, as reported in the Washington Post back in May, have introduced a bill to prohibit the FCC from even possibly imposing Internet access charges, even though the FCC has said repeatedly that would never happen in the first place. According to sponsor Fred Upton (R-MI), though, his bill, the Internet Access Charge Prohibition Act, "soothes the fears" of those thousands of people who have written him and other representatives because, frankly, they got bamboozled by the hoax. Upton's bill (HR1291) is still pending committee review before the House.
So don't be too hard on Clinton and Lazio - at least they only talked about the fake; others are actually wasting real legislative time on it. Sigh... and you wonder why it takes so long to get anything useful done on Capitol Hill.
Man, I hate this rumor. I interned for a Congressman this summer, we sent out probably 50-100 letters a week to people who were concerned about this bill. They've sent out over 9,000 letters over the past THREE years on bill 602P and Congressman Schnell.
Whoever started that rumor, has probably cost the taxpayers millions already. Unfortunately, congressmen (at least the good ones) are obligated to respond to all letters/e-mails received with valid snail mail addresses. They do not respond to simple e-mails, because there is no way of verifying actual constituency.
Re:Get a Life
Is one of the most intelligent things I have ever read on Slashdot.
The only thing I'd add to it is that I think the reason why we have so much freedom today is that greater technology automatically me greater ability for bloody-minded busybodies to interfere in the lives of complete strangers.
Unfortunately, without some new technology that actually enhances freedom (cheap, reliable spaceflight?) to counter our current control-every-aspect-of-an-individual's life technology, I don't think we can go back to the good old days...
I really prefer the Age of Reason myself, especially to the coming Age of Eternal Darkness... (brought to you by a partnership between Sony and the American Family Association, tm, all rights reserved.)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Here's the standard US Dept of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capacity (CIAC) website for tracking common Internet hoaxes.
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
Most of the classics are in there, and they update this on a mostly useful schedule. I include this in the reply whenever one of my less-clued-in remote relatives asks "Is this legit?"
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Could not the US Postal Service, patent the idea of "Delivering Mail", in any form? Mmmm gives me an idea, i let you all know what it is when i 0wn j00z :)
This was an attempt to be funny, did it work?
How every version of MICROS~1 Windows(TM) comes to exist.
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
Looks like they reorganized last week. The new, more memorable address:
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/
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Don't you find it amazing that politicans can twist any little question into a big issue.
Its also a good indication of the little candidates know about technology when they can't even see that the "tax" would be in every way impossible to enforce...
... one of them had responded "you dumbass that's a hoax"
I heard some caller to a radio show this morning claim that this rumor came about as a result of a Canadian bill 602P that was real. Someone repackaged it as though it were happening in the U.S. This is the first that I've ever heard this part of the legend, so I thought I'd pass it along. The whole idea of taxing emails is so absurd that I have difficulty believing that any legislative body would actually entertain it, but this is Canada after all :-)
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
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I think we should be more glad about the fact that both candidates were enthusiastially against this bill. Even the idea of an e-mail tax is ridiculous; it's good to sea that both Clinton and Lazio oppose it not just in politics but in principle.
It's all a matter of trust. Trusting no politicians is not an option and will hurt you economically if others do take the risk -- nor is trusting every fool with a gavel. The truth is in the middle. I'm grateful to be living in a country where I think I can (mostly) trust the government to provide me this kind of services. So, whether you trust Clinton and Lazio or not is not very relevant. The major advancement here is the clear and present danger that e-mail taxes present.
Coulda been worse - at least their reaction, when put on the spot with something they didn't know about and hadn't paid attention to years of hoax warnings, was "no, we shouldn't be taxing the net" as opposed to "yes, my staff has been evaluating the right way to tax the net and we'll be sure to check out that proposal as well."
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Since when is Switzerland a poor country?
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
One thing the news story does not mention is if the debate moderator thought it was a real bill or simply mentioned it as a test for the candidates. If it's the former, the moderator should be fired for not fact-checking before asking questions. If it's the latter, she should be commended for creating such a hilarious moment.
Free Hans!
I don't know if you can judge everyone by their knowledge of common internet hoaxes. Politicians, by necessity, are generalists; they have to know a little bit about everything, and I've seen some otherwise intelligent, educated people get caught by this particular hoax.
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