Taxing IM
I doubt this will come to pass, it's almost like the old urban
legend that the U.S. Postal service will start charging for e-mail, but
saddly this is a true story. After just having a
conversation over Skype (side note: I was blow away. The
sound quality really was
better than a standard land-line). Something like this would a)
stifle development (at least in the U.S.) and b) cut off the U.S. from
the rest of Internet, as far as chat is concerned. Given the
powerful computer lobbies I can't imgine that this would actually come
to pass.
Let's hope not.
Taxes on tap for Internet chat?
Thanks to a bizarre move by Congress last week, p2pCommunity and
hundreds of similar projects could end up paying taxes to state
governments to prop up the antediluvian scheme of running copper wires
to rural households for analog phone service.