From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 11:44:41 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Update on Wine Politics
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970603190607.0073f2e4@popd.ix.netcom.com>
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A few weeks ago there was a thread about Florida's proposal
to ban direct shipments of wine into the state, making it a _felony_
for anybody except a state-licensed wholesaler to import alcohol.
The weekend I was up in the California wine country, and one of the
local papers had an article on other states limiting direct shipments.
Apparently about 24 states ban them, though only one makes it a felony;
the rest treat it as commercial business, either civil or criminal.
[That's evil also, but at least it's not an outrageous penalty...]

While mail-order wine has been a possibility for a while, the 
Internet has changed the marketing economics enough to be interesting,
and some of the Internet wine businesses have been fined by a few states,
with typical penalties of $7-35K.  At least one of them has taken a
Frissellian approach to the problem - $7000 isn't a big fine,
and it'll cost the government more than that to collect, so they're
ignoring it and trusting the economics and uncatchability
to encourage the government to ignore it also.

			Bill


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#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)