Just what the U.S. Government and Postal Service Wants

["Patrick Fogarty" <padraig_fogarty@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have no desire to be one of those vehement opposers, and the list of
issues wll likely get large.  I just want to raise one.

It has been quasi-common knowledge that the U.S. Post Office has, at one
time or another, blamed the loss of revenues to e-mail for their woes rather
than their own bumbling civil-servent incompetence.  They, and the U.S.
Congress, have been trying for years to receive revenues from the internet
without inhibiting it.  They are quietly waiting until the time is right to
begin taxing various components of it.

One of their major problems is that they can't justify their existence as a
necessary and value-providing intermediary.  The decentralized nature of the
internet, and specifically the self-managing nature of SMTP, is exactly
contrary to the way the post office has worked; rendering them useless.

The methods being proposed here, if done so in a way that does not maintain
SMTP's decentralized nature, inch us ever closer to what the U.S. Government
has been waiting for.  These methods could be a choke-point in the system
that allows the government to step in and begin taxing e-mail; something
they have been trying to do for years.

Just a thought.