DCNA Proposal, docket 37-42: "The New Modem Tax"

[Lars Poulsen <[e-mail]>]

Dear Mr Vice President,

I have been an admirer of yours since shortly after I moved to this
country 13 years ago, to work on building the Internet, a task that
still remains the focus of my career, even as it shortly will take me
back to my native Denmark for a while.

I have been consistently impressed with your consistent vision of a
future where high technology and respect for the environment go hand in
hand, rather than compete. And when the new administration moved in this
past January, I was as exited about your participation, as I was about
the Chief's.

One of the things I was most excited about, was having someone at the
top, who has used the Internet and understands what this new
infrastructure can do both for business and for democracy. And I felt
confident that such interest from on high would be helpful as the
Internet trasnforms itself from a DoD-sponsored research tool for US
universities to a ubiquitous information appliance for Fortune 500
companies as well as for grassroots activists around the world.

But when I heard about a new tax proposal hidden in docket 37-42 of the
proposal for a Data Communications Network Architecture (which I assume
is a regulatory appendage to the NREN legislation) I was dismayed.
If I understand this correctly, it is a proposal to raise $60 million
to finance NREN through a tax on modems as well as a charge to be collected
by the local exchange carriers.

To put it bluntly, I would rather see the government funding for the
NREN deleted than see such taxes imposed at this stage. The network has
grown to where it would probably survive as a business tool if the
govenrment funding disappeared overnight. I would like to see
government institutions connected to the net, not because I want the government to support the network, but because such connections would allow the
respective branches of government to perform their mission better. As
such, these connections should not be counted as "NREN money" but as
agency money.

In the hope that these musings may influence the pending legislation
appropriately, I shall remain

Your humble and obedient servant

/ Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer	Internet E-mail: [e-mail]
  CMC Network Products / Rockwell Int'l	Telephone: [phone]	
  Santa Barbara, CA 93117-3083		TeleFAX:   [phone]

It almost goes without saying that these opinions are mine, not Rockwell's.