Sunday's Seattle Times Article on Taxing the Internet

[Doug Tooley]

Hi all-

In the business section of the Sunday Seattle Times is an excellent
article on the Internet taxation - worth a whole month's subscription
price just for the single article.

This piece, by writer Diedtra Henderson, summarizes the internet taxing
efforts of some 30 states, as well as the proposed Federal legislation to
ban all such taxes. 

State Senator Finkbeiner (R. Carnation) (originally a democrat) has
garnered a small piece of national fame for his efforts to ban taxes for
the next two years - a forward looking, balanced, and fair approach to the
issue.

I'll not bother to summarize the rest of the article, rather just urge you
to read it.  I would though likely to comment a bit upon the relationship
between Taxes and the development of the internet.

The internet is not just a a new technology to be regulated by the
government.  It will fundamentally change the operation of government
itself and it is crucial that we understand this as we go forward.  In a
recent issue of Wired a contributor suggested that the way to influence
the government is to make political contributions.

This is certainly important, but this approach merely touches the surface
of the impact the internet will have upon the internet, and also falls
victim to the perspective that we are subjects of our government, not that
our government is subject to our collective, and articulated, will.

Recently a SCN User, Curt Cockrum, put forth a post comparing our court
system, and the law, to a computer program, arguing that our society is
facing a infinite loop in our legal system. This is frightening - to think
that the internet might be used to 'program' all of us is shocking.  Our
society is not directed by the law, the law is rather an error trap to
handle those things that go wrong. 

The single largest way our government 'programs' society is through
education, but in the final analysis it is all of us that take the vast
majority of the responsibility for 'society' through each of our
interactions.

The net is infused with this belief, and it is crucial that we work to see
the communication powers of the net used to influence government as much
as possible.

One would think that education alone would substitute the need for a
strong legal/criminal system.  Peculiarly that does not appear to be the
case in Post WWII America.  Unfortunately though the relative proportions
of educated vs 'working folks' has switched we seem to need the law all
the more.

Though the communication tools, and an educated populace, have made it
possible to avoid some of the 'constitutional short cuts' adopted by the
legal profession for practical reasons these same short cuts have now
developed to the point where, in some cases, the legal profession is now
working in direct contradiction to the Constitution of the United States,
the document that serves as the basis for all legal authority.  Enhanced
access to court records now also means that the results of these
'constititional short cuts' are public knowledge throughout the Country
and world.  This violation of privacy leads to a result whereby the Legals
system of the United States is becoming a threat to public safety as well
as our right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

That rant said let me propose the following, big picture, general approach
to internet taxation, for your consideration: 

The internet should not be taxed, nor regulated till the following occurs:
   
    The federal government runs on a balanced budget

After that point all communications related revenues, including bandwidth
licensing, should be dedicated to the reduction, and eventual removal of,
the federal deficit.



* * * * * * * * * * * * * *  From the Listowner  * * * * * * * * * * * *
.	To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to:
majordomo at scn.org		In the body of the message, type:
unsubscribe scn
END