[ih] AUP revision to allow commercial traffic

[Miles Fidelman]

On 12/6/15 2:29 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 12/4/2015 9:26 AM, Jonathan Grudin wrote:
>> I visited USC/ISI in 1993 and remarked that commercial traffic seemed to have begun and was told emphatically that it was because enforcement was lax.
>
> Around 1988/89 while I was at Digital Equipment, the Support Services
> folk who were funding my lab said they needed to be able to do regular
> customer service -- ie, service their commercial accounts -- over the
> Arpanet, but couldn't because of the AUP.
>
> However since they saw DEC's competitors already operating this way,
> they said they needed to get the DEC attorneys to find a way to say it
> was ok.  This took some effort, but eventually the lead Corporate
> attorney did bless such conduct.
>
> So, yeah, it was lax.  For a long time.
>

There were also portions of the net, like PSInet, and NEARnet that 
allowed commercial traffic on their portions of the net - by dint of 
being user-funded.  As I recall, there was little enforcement at the 
backbone gateways.

As to official dates - probably the most authoritative sources would be 
Steve Wolfe and Barry Shein, who practically went to war over commercial 
access.

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra