I remember a commercial Usenet service around the mid 80's. Before that you had to have a friend at .com hooked into ARPANet. It wasnt hard to do, but it wasn

I remember a commercial Usenet service around the mid 80's. Before that you had to have a friend at .com hooked into ARPANet. It wasnt hard to do, but it wasn't open to the average Joe. Unfortunately the fees at the commercial company were too high and it lasted only a year. $5/hour or so were pretty low for the time, but still too high for casual use.