[ih] AUP revision to allow commercial traffic (more: direct reference to NSF AUP change)

[jcurran at istaff.org (John Curran)]

On Dec 22, 2015, at 11:52 AM, John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> wrote:
> ...
> After the NSFNET AUP was changed in 1991, there was a collective sign of relief (and we 
> stopped asking prospective customers for their research/educational purpose for connecting
> to the Internet?)

Ah - a nice reference to the rather subtle nature of the change made to the NSFNET AUP in 
late 1990 turns out to be contained in the report of the "Commercialization of the Internet? 
workshop that was held at Harvard?s Kennedy School of Government in 1990 and that is 
published as RFC 1191 - <https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1192.txt <https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1192.txt>>.   On page 2 -
  'Under the draft acceptable use policy in effect from 1988 to mid-
   1990, use of the NSFNET backbone had to support the purpose of
   "scientific research and other scholarly activities."  The interim
   policy promulgated in June 1990 is the same, except that the purpose
   of the NSFNET is now "to support research and education in and among
   academic institutions in the U.S. by access to unique resources and
   the opportunity for collaborative work." '
Not much of a change, but it was enough to allow service providers to sign up folks without 
explicitly seeking their research/scholarly purpose...

FYI,
/John


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