Reply #134: Actually, back in the day, it was ARPA, before DARPA.

[lapfog_1]

I was one of the original IMP programmers.

And it was called the ARPAnet. And it wasn't a big risk. The only risk was that it wouldn't be used enough to justify the expense, or that the uses would be deemed not worth the money. And given the amount of use and what it was used for in the very early days (past demo, but back when you could still map each and every computer on the newly named Internet)... well, I'm glad it was government funded because a corporation would have thrown it away. Much like Xerox did with almost everything invented at Xerox Parc (like the mouse you use and the very concept of a "window" on your computer screen, bit mapped at that).

Risk to let corporations make use of government resource aka the ARPAnet?

Thank Al Gore. He is the one that authored the bill (as a senator) to allow commercial traffic on the Internets (those collection of tubes). It was very controversial at the time (at least withing the government research institutes and universities that used it).