From my memory and understanding, this reads similar in a lot of ways to the WorldCom anti-wiretapping stance and the resulting hyper-aggressive federal prosecution
You're thinking of Qwest's Nacchio and his insider-trading conviction. WorldCom was a few years earlier and an unambiguous case of massive financial fraud on the heels of Enron. Bernie and his cronies deserved every bit of what they got, and more besides.
Yeah, Bernie and WorldCom completely ruined one of the greatest tech startups ever, MCI. I mean, they broke up the AT&T monopoly on phone service! With what started out as a microwave radio service for truck drivers! (Yes, the AT&T lawsuits to assert copyright over UNIX followed, but those were unintended consequences and not MCI's fault.)
I once got a tour of the building that ran uu.net (owned by MCI) before it became the ___domain of spamlords. There was the control center of practically the entire internet backbone of 1993 right in front of me.
I'm old enough to remember UUNet as the center of the universe and by curious circumstances I ended up having them as my ISP years later (around 1999/2000) when I moved to a place that only had ISDN as the high speed connectivity option. UUNet had a POP that was local call dialable for me, due to the phone company lacking ISDN capability on the local switch: they backhauled my circuit to a city 120 miles away and UUNet has colocation there.
The lowest ping times I've had before or since!
According to Wikipedia, The World was the first commercial ISP in 1989. I do remember using MCIMail at a law firm around 1990-91 though, so they weren't far behind.
Looking at the USENIX entry at the bottom of that Wikipedia page, "Spike" states that it was Alternet (UUNet) that connected The World to the internet in 1990. Also in the Slashdot interview he admits in 1989 they still were not on the internet.
In 1989 the only internet connections I was aware of were via universities or government agencies. Maybe The World was offering copies of Usenet or mail forwarding prior to 1990, as were the people behind UUNet, but I would guess they must have first downloaded the bits from a university or government agency.
Can a company provide "internet service" before it is connected to the internet? :)
