🚀 go-pugleaf

What do people think of this?  The original source is clari.nb.top,
and I have only quoted about 50% of the article, since it is protected
by Clarinet's copyright.

ALBANY, NEW YORK, U.S.A., 1991 AUG 9 (NB) -- New York State 
bulletin board system operators (sysops) have banded together to 
attempt to roll back legislation that imposes a requirement on sysops 
to collect New York State sales tax on software downloaded by users 
of their systems.

The legislation, enacted as part of the New York state budget 
agreement (Senate bill #6079, Assembly #8491), went into effect on 
September 1st and, according to the understanding of an organization 
of New York sysops (NYBBS), requires sysops to remit to New York 
State sales tax on any software downloaded. It is the understanding 
of this group that the tax requirement includes not only commercial 
software but also "shareware" and public domain software (in the 
case of public domain software, the sysop is required to estimate the 
"value" of the software and then remit applicable tax). The tax 
remission requirement is said to be in effect for the sysop 
whether or not the downloader ever pays for the software.

Tony Mack, a sysop in the Albany area, told Newsbytes that 31 
sysops met on Saturday, September 7th with legislators, attempting 
to reach agreement on modifications. Mack said that the legislators, 
Assemblyman Paul Tonko (D - 105th Dist) and James Tedisco (R - 
107th), told the group that they believed that exemptions could be 
made for BBSs that did not accept donations of any type and imposed 
no restrictions on downloading such as "upload/download ratios" or 
membership requirements.

Mack said that the compromise was unacceptable and pointed to the 
fact that many BBS accept donations simply to pay for Usenet 
charges and equipment upgrades. Jack Brooks, sysop of New York 
City's Dorsai Embassy, agreed with Mack, telling Newsbytes, "Dorsai 
charges users of our Usenet interface $25 a year. This charge is an 
attempt to offset our monthly payments for the Usenet feed and, 
quite frankly, it doesn't cover it so we still have to make it up from 
our own pockets. This law is absurd and must be repealed."....
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