The Ultimate Spin?

Heard this on the news this morning:

Since 1999, AT&T has avoided paying about $500,000,000.00 (five hundred million dollars) in calling card fees which it should be paying to local phone companies (the details are complicated, Google it if you want more). Anyway, their arguement is that they *used to* pay the fees but since 1999 people using the cards have been hearing advertisements every time they placed a call. This makes AT&T an information service and therefore exempt from the fees.

I love big business.

Full (short) writeup here:

http://www.indystar.com/articles/1/224551-8341-223.html (I tried to pick the least intrusive site I could, so I skipped the Wash Post and a few others and went with this source).