I don't really understand the fear. The Compuserves and Prodigys of the world died because they weren't open and it didn't take a government dictate to kill them.
Openness won in the early iterations of online services in part because there was a neutral medium over which you were able to connect to your choice of service: the PSTN.
I'm not talking about why they died (that's obvious, the non-corporate internet was much better). I'm talking about how lousy the offerings were when the pipe providers could do whatever they wanted.
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I don't really understand the fear. The Compuserves and Prodigys of the world died because they weren't open and it didn't take a government dictate to kill them.
Openness won in the early iterations of online services in part because there was a neutral medium over which you were able to connect to your choice of service: the PSTN.
I'm not talking about why they died (that's obvious, the non-corporate internet was much better). I'm talking about how lousy the offerings were when the pipe providers could do whatever they wanted.