Criticism of the NSF grows
A barrage of criticism of the NSF arose out of the advantage that many commercial providers thought ANS had with their partially government funded, yet partially commercial, network. Other network service providers felt that the anti-commercial acceptable use policy of the NSFnet put them at a disadvantage. The NSF was hesitant to open up their network for all commercial activity because they did not want commercial networks to financially benefit from the network provided by taxpayer dollars. In essence, the NSF would not allow commercial messages to be transmitted over their network. However, ANS was using the lines of that network for their own commercial benefit (due to the "extra" space that they created). Many in the industry saw this as a blatant conflict and they criticized the NSF for allowing ANS to weasel their way around the AUP. The decision to allow ANS to use the additional network capacity for their own profit was defended by then NSF networking division director, Stephen Wolff. He defended ANS by stating, "They [IBM and MCI] made an investment, they competed fairly [in the competition for the bid to upgrade the lines to T3s], and having won the competition, they took a business risk," (Fisher Dec 1991). Eventually however, Wolf would prove to change his opinions in favor of commercializing the network.
Criticism of the NSF's resistance to commercial interests and the perceived commercial advantage given to ANS came from both inside and outside of the government. One congressperson instrumental in the commercializing of the NSFnet was Rep. Rick Borcher, D-VA. As the chair of the House Science Subcommittee he had a great deal of power to express his opinion that, "Šthe network is structured [so] that all commercial providers of network services receive equal treatment and that government policy in managing the network not favor any provider or set of providers over others." Outside of the government, representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) criticized the NSF's acceptable use policy. Mitchell Kapor, the EFF's president, stated that the restrictions on commercialism harm the potential of the future Internet, "by precluding widespread offering of commercial electronic information services and discouraging commercial organizations from making full use of the Internet," (Killette). Criticism such as this was becoming quite common, and the NSF was begining to feel the pressure.