While I don't necessarily agree with the grandparent post, we should think back to the early days (in the early '90s) before the Net's full-scale commercialisation. It was a different Internet, much smaller and more uneven, but not necessarily a worse one. People paid for their own web hosting or used space provided by educational institutions/government.

The Internet didn't always run on big business - business gradually shaped it into the way it is today.