[ih] AUP revision to allow commercial traffic

[Ian Peter]

There were people outside of the USA providing paid for access to newsgroups 
and DNS based email services from at least 1985 and probably earlier. I 
think governments in general (or any particular government) lost control of 
who could access the Internet quite early on (good thing)

Ian Peter

-----Original Message----- 
From: internet-history-request at postel.org
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2015 7:00 AM
To: internet-history at postel.org
Subject: internet-history Digest, Vol 98, Issue 3

Send internet-history mailing list submissions to
internet-history at postel.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
internet-history-request at postel.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
internet-history-owner at postel.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of internet-history digest..."


Today's Topics:

   1. Re: AUP revision to allow commercial traffic (Miles Fidelman)
   2. Re: AUP revision to allow commercial traffic (Guy Almes)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2015 15:26:31 -0500
From: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
Subject: Re: [ih] AUP revision to allow commercial traffic
To: internet-history at postel.org
Message-ID: <566499F7.5020903 at meetinghouse.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed



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



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2015 18:31:37 -0600
From: Guy Almes <galmes at tamu.edu>
Subject: Re: [ih] AUP revision to allow commercial traffic
To: dcrocker at bbiw.net, Jonathan Grudin <jgrudin at microsoft.com>,
"lpress at csudh.edu" <lpress at csudh.edu>, "internet-history at postel.org"
<internet-history at postel.org>
Message-ID: <5664D369.8000200 at tamu.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

One other perspective: in the late 1980s I directed one of the
NSFnet-related regional networks -- this one in Texas.  Initially, all
our members were universities and research centers.  Then we connected
the research department of one of the major oil companies.  The
motivation was clear, at least at first: to enable collaboration between
industry researchers and university folks in departments such as geology
and petroleum engineering.  We knew that if we thought about this,
closed our eyes, and said "transitive closure" three times, something
complicated would emerge.  But I confess to being surprised by the
rapidity with which the complications emerged.

One other related comment: as such non-university non-lab sites were
connected and as the nature of their "usage" became, ahem, mixed, we all
realized that our options for doing the right thing were limited by the
essentially-pure destination-IP-address-based routing of the Internet.
Policy-oriented folks encouraged the IETF and others to explore "policy
routing", but there was a very natural mismatch between their visions
and what was practical, then or now.

This is, of course, similar to many human endeavors where practice
precedes theory.

-- Guy

On 12/6/15 1:29 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.
>
> d/
>


------------------------------

_______________________________________________
internet-history mailing list
internet-history at postel.org
http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.


End of internet-history Digest, Vol 98, Issue 3
***********************************************