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.