How Did The Net Become Free In The First Place?

An Anonymous Coward seeks historical information on the following: "Maybe it's just time for me to brush up on my geek history, but I find myself wondering more and more each day, how it was possible for the Internet to escape government AND corporate rule. These days, record companies are trying to tell me that I own the plastic CD, but not the material on it. I can purchase DVDs, but am only able to watch them in certain countries (read: Regions). Consumer software seems to be switching from flat-rate fees to subscription based services. Media providers are merging with mediums (MSNBC and AOL-Time Warner come to mind..) Therefore, it amazes me that the fundamentals of the Internet were able to avoid all of this. How did that happen? Was there just a different mindset back then? Did anyone predict the dotcom explosion (and ultimately, denouement?) How did this medium come to run itself? And how can we create another medium like it when every last bit of control is eventually squeezed out from this one?"

Comments

Sorry but...

[ooze]

Just read internet histories. There are so much out there.
In the time the internet developed it's community status was a time when it was dominated by educational and academic solidarity. And this is something that still values knowledgesearch and personal development higher than commercial and control issues.
The fact that it was missed so long by the "manager" type is, that this type of people mostly just have a lack of imagination. And there was a too small market until 1993.
And after that time the net was simply too fast and too big to control and keep track of. So it is very hard to keep a monopol or a dominanation on content (but it is possible).
And you can see that the big companies are handicapping themselves with the introduction of standardized control mechanisms. An interaction between companies with lawyers and contracts to standardize something is far too slow to be the first in the net. And the first in the net is the best known in the net, and until the first one doesn't make serious mistakes, he will stay the best known and the biggest.
So the "I just wanna do something, and I just don't care about money" will always be faster and more innovative than management driven efforts. Though they mostly have less continuity, but as long as the character of the net is a lack of continuity (with all advantages and disadvantages) there will be no instance that can control the net. Of course, there are several instaces that can seriously harm the usability of several services in the net, but there is always someone to fill the gap. The merely presence of some open standard protocols and the network lines are enough to enable anybody with access to the network to be potentially available to anyone.

So, that was enough of text you can read in any internet hype aricle.