RFC- AKA What's the C for

[Rich Littleton]

Bill,

You're correct to ponder precisely these points.  And here's a scary
thought I have in increasing occurrences these days.  Our social/political
basis might be being run so that enterprises which are not commercial, are
disfavored.  (Just today a federal court ruled in favor of tobacco
companies by saying that nicotine has not been shown to be a drug, so the
FDA may not regulate cigarette distribution.)  If that is true, then
freenets will be forced to function at a useless level, or be crushed by
tax laws.

Freenets might have to engage some high-powered legal help to look very
closely at the tax laws and see how they can function without restraints
by the IRS or without opposition from IPs.

However, what we can't do is self-censure so we are doing to ourselves
what we worry the IRS (or other IPs) would do.

Thanks for the note.

Rich

______________________________________________________________________

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On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Bill Scott wrote:

> Rich; 
> 
> Again, no argument with what you have said. Those are things that need to
> be done.
> 
> Before this goes any further please go to the SCN web page and read the
> Summer 98 SeaZine article "Community Networks Threatened". 
> 
> The IRS position described there puts us somewhere between a paradox and a
> quandry. The more we look like a commercial ISP and provide similar
> services the more likely we are to come under fire for competing with
> those commercial businesses. On the other hand, if we don't start
> modernizing our potential members/users are going to migrate to the
> commercial ISPs that provide the services wanted by those who might
> otherwise join us.
> 
> I don't have any answers but before we take off toward new services and
> updating everything let's be sure we're not shooting ourselves in the
> foot.
> 
> Bill S
> billhs at speakeasy.org  "Two of the most famous products of U.C. Berkeley
> bk846 at scn.org          are LSD and UNIX. Is this a coincidence ? "
> ******Unless otherwise stated,this message may be forwarded********
> 
> 
> 

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