While Internet use is not generally restricted, different types of legal problems and issues can arise based on whether an individual uses the Internet for personal or commercial reasons. However, generally it can be understood that commercial use involves some kind of quantifiable gain whereas personal use does not. For example, using the Internet to help plan a vacation is personal use. A travel agent using the Internet to plan a vacation for a client is commercial use. In plain terms, personal use is use without gain.
Commercial use is use for gain.
This is important because the Internet is different from most other types of information mediums. On the Internet, an individual can be both a user of services and provider of services. For example, someone who has a personal web page and also enjoys surfing the net is both a user and a provider of Internet services. Because of this dual-capacity, many legal issues involving the Internet have personal and commercial use dimensions. In other words, sometimes it can be really hard to tell whether Internet use is personal or commercial, and that sometimes there is a fuzzy legal distinction between personal and commercial use.