Download - Future of the Internet – And how to stop it.

Notes to Pages 23–26 255
General Electric’s GEnie sank to 20,000 lonely members ... Apple snipped the connection
on its eWorld service. Could AOL be next”).
8. Amy Harmon, Loyal Subscribers of Compuserve Are Fearing a Culture Clash in Its Takeover,
N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 16, 1998, at D8.
9. Peter H. Lewis, A Boom for On-line Services, N.Y. TIMES, July 12, 1994, at D1.
10. Harmon, supra note 8.
11. See, e.g., Wikipedia, Islands of Kesmai, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islands_of_Kesmai
(as of May 25, 2007 at 08:00 GMT).
12. Harmon, supra note 8.
13. Peter H. Lewis, Adventures in Cyberspace, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 11, 1994, at A5. One variation
was MCI Mail, which offered only e-mail (and, for a time, e-mail to postal mail) services
and charged per e-mail sent. The service failed to, or at least chose not to, develop
any services beyond its eponymous title. See L. R. Shannon, MCI Mail Changes the Nature
of Letters, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 9, 1993, at C13.
14. For instance, CompuServe featured the PROgramming area, which allowed subscribers
to write and post software. See, e.g., Ron Kovacs, Editors Desk, SYNDICATE ZMAG., Feb. 7,
1989, available at http://www.atarimax.com/freenet/freenet_material/5.8-BitComputers
SupportArea/11.Z-Magazine/showarticle.php146.
15. For more on the ways in which the law treated services that chose different levels of intervention
into user content, see Jonathan Zittrain, The Rise and Fall of Sysopdom, 10
HARV. J.L. & TECH. 495 (SUMMER 1997).
16. See Andrew Currah, Hollywood, the Internet and the Geographies of Disruptive Innovation
(unpublished manuscript, on file with author); see also Mary J. Benner &
Michael L. Tushman, Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity
Dilemma Revisited, 28 ACAD. MGMT. REV. 238, 239 (2003).
17. See Ross Rubin, Players Scramble for Consumer Market, INTERACTIVE HOME, Sept. 1,
1996; Steve Kovsky & Paula Rooney, Online Service Providers Upgrade UIs, PC WEEK,
June 24, 1996, at 14.
18. A Little Microcomputer BBS History, http://www.portcommodore.com/bbshist.php
pathmain-cbmidx-bbsidx (last visited June 1, 2007).
19. See HOWARD RHEINGOLD, THE VIRTUAL COMMUNITY, at xxiii–xxiv (1993), available
at http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html; Jack Rickard, Home-Grown BB$,
WIRED, Sept.–Oct. 1993, at 42, available at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/
1.04/bbs.html.
20. See Tom Jennings, Fido and FidoNet, http://www.wps.com/FidoNet/index.html (last
visited June 1, 2007); Living Internet, Bulletin Board Systems & FidoNet, http://www
.livinginternet.com/u/ui_fidonet.htm (last visited June 1, 2007).
21. Id.
22. See Tom Jennings et al., FidoNet History and Operation (Feb. 8, 1985), http://www
.rxn.com/~net282/fidonet.jennings.history.1.txt.
23. Some projects are exploring mesh networking technology as a way of networking devices
together, and connecting them to the Internet backbone. See, e.g., Nan Chen, Wireless
Mesh Networking for Developing Countries, CONVERGE! NETWORK DIGEST, July 13,