Today, someone posted on my list the message about metering Internet
usage that has been making the rounds lately.  It begins this way:
 
>>A very bad storm is brooding on the horizon.
>>
>>In the future, you might have to pay a charge for every E-mail
>>message you send or receive, every Usenet article you read,
>>every kilobyte of data you transfer with ftp, every hypertext
>>link you follow with NCSA Mosaic or Gopher...
>>
>>Hopefully this frightens you as much as it does me.
>>But it will happen, unless YOU do something about it.
>>
>>Please read the attached, fill out the requested info, and
>>mail it back to [log in to unmask]  It also wouldn't hurt to
>>forward a copy of this to everyone you know on the Internet.
 
        This is followed by a lengthy statement from something called the
Taxpayer Assets Project about what may be proposed, the problems with the
proposals, and where people can write to register their concern.  My
question is, how seriously should we take this?  I gather that this isn't
simply an urban legend a la the modem tax, but is it as serious as it
sounds?  Another subscriber on my list had sent me a copy of the above
stuff privately; I think his hope was that I'd either post it or encourage
him to post it.  I did neither, though I didn't dismiss it, either.  Now
that a different subscriber has posted it to my list (a list with almost
3000 subscribers), I'd like to know how to respond if people send alarmed
responses.
 
        I searched the LSTOWN-L logfiles for 1994 looking for previous
discussion of this matter, but two different searches both came up with no
hits, so I thought I'd ask for your collective wisdom.
 
        Many thanks.
 
        Joan Korenman, WMST-L Listowner   KORENMAN@UMBC
        Univ. of MD. Baltimore County     [log in to unmask]
        Baltimore, Maryland 21228-5398