You and me both, and that became a cycle with each new generation of technology. I remember that FidoNet (and Usenet, for that matter) had a lot of that ham radio ethos, with commercial messages most unwelcome. But once the internet got too big, Usenet drowned in spam. It was too easy to crapflood newsgroups into oblivion, and once the politicians started grandstanding, ISPs wasted no time nuking their NNTP servers.