this formulation does not take into account the transfer
of responsibility and authority for policy increasingly
to NSF and to the so-called Federal Networking Council
after about 1988. NSF's role increased substantially
with the creation of the NSFNET.
In any case the principal point is that the USG has
deliberately relaxed its control over policy as the
Internet has become increasingly commercialzed and
internationalized.
Vint
At 11:21 PM 1/23/2002 -0800, Ed Gerck wrote:
ARPA.
Control was injected into the original ARPANET by the ARPA
Contracts, which controlled all users and uses of the initial
ARPANET and the Early Internet. The Appropriate Use Rules
dissolved slowly between 1986 an 1995. Thus, one of the ARPA
roles was to instill trust by holding the power to remove badly
behaving users. Very few were removed, but in the early days,
everyone knew that had better behave, or else...
However, when the Appropriate Use Rules dissolved slowly
between 1986 an 1995, it seems that the denizens of the Net did
not become aware of the loss of trust until it was truly gone (now!)...
and now they wonder where it went, or if it ever existed, cause
they did not see it going away;-)...
Stef has an interesting chronology of these events, in terms
of the paradigm shifts that hit the Net as it developed. I am
indebted to his clear formulation (some of which I repeated
above) as well as to his Frog analogy. What has happened,
is that as the ARPA controls slowly dissolved with the
evolution of the Internet, it has had the effect of Boiling The
Frog, where-in the Frog does not notice that anything is
happening until now it is too late for the Frog to do anything
about it.