The Open Internet
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"Commercialization" is a broad term that encompasses the general move from a sphere dominated by the publics to a space dominated by propriety influences.
A Brief History of Public and Proprietary Spaces
The notion of public property goes back far; in the United States, modern copyright law and intellectual property (IP) laws have their beginning in the U.S. constitution. Article 1, Section 8, clause 8 reads:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
In its current form, the U.S. copyright law protects creative works for the duration of the author's (or authors') life plus 70 years. [2]
The Early Internet: Before the modern Internet
Before the internet--as a mass, global network--existed, there were many networks operated centrally by corporations; users couldn't add to the network, contrary to the modern internet, and users could only access to view content and services directly offered by the corporation that owns the network. However, these networks still relied on the telephone network of AT&T. Such proprietary networks included CompuServe, America Online, Prodigy, GEnie. These networks, unlike the larger internet, could not interact with each other.[3] To access content (again, which was wholly controlled by the owning company), users had to sign in to the company's servers; instead of these proprietary networks being generative [3], users could only access content that the company explicitly approved. Often, programmers were contracted out to create content for the servers, but, especially in the case of CompuServe, available content was left largely unchanged. [3]
