Before the internet was widely available in Austin outside of UT computer labs, Austinites connected on BBSs of all kinds over phone lines. There must have been hundreds if not thousands in the 512 area code. Some of the old phone directories are preserved in old text files from that period. You can see that most of the BBSs had themes or main topics. Some were devoted only to sharing files or playing games, while others were about chatting, matchmaking, and connecting with other people. One of the earliest and most popular BBSs in Austin specialized in tabletop RPG and board games. It was called Illuminati BBS, and the person who came up with it was a fellow named Steve Jackson.

Steve Jackson was born in Oklahoma but was raised in Houston. He graduated from Rice University with a double BA in Political Science and Biology in 1974, but by 1979 he was trying to make money selling tabletop games he invented. One of these earliest games was called "Raid on Iran" and the point was to rescue the hostages. In 1980 he moved to Austin and rented a shop on the south side of town. In the beginning he was making a little over $100k a year selling books, magazines, RPG materials, box games, and card games. By 1988 he made his first million dollars. One of his most popular games was called [Illuminati](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati_(game%29), which had invented in 1982. He started a BBS from his business in 1986 called Illuminati BBS where players could call in to discuss aspects of the game and possibly order new games at 300 baud. Later in the 80s as modem speeds improved somewhat, he added a MUD online game and connected his BBS to primitive email server systems called FidoNet and WWIVnet. A wide variety of people started joining the BBS and by the time 1990 rolled around he had at least a couple thousand users and hired staff to manage it.

With the ubiquity of computers in every home came the rise of the casual hacker. The newspapers of the time are filled with stories and editorials about the menace that hackers posed to nascent computer networks worldwide.

Now unbeknownst to Steve Jackson, one of his employees, a guy he hired to moderate the BBS named Loyd Blankenship, was a member of the [Legion of Doom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Doom_(hacking%29), a true '31337' hacking group active in the latter part of the 20th century. You see, one of the LoD members in another state hacked into and had stolen some confidential documents relating to the 911 system from BellSouth, one of the baby Bells left over from the breakup of AT&T in 1984. The confidential 911 documents were then published in a widely read eZine called Phrack, but also in the form of digital copies, which were both disseminated via BBS across many state lines. One place these documents ended up was the personal Austin-area BBS of Mr. Loyd Blankenship. This had nothing to do with Steve Jackson Games or Illuminati BBS, but the US Secret Service, who was investigating the "digital break in", was apparently too out of their depth to know better. What followed was one of the worst abuses of government power in American history and led to the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to champion the cause of civil liberties in digital spaces. Other people who were involved have told this story of what happened next better than I ever could and I'll let them tell it in their own words. Quoting now from SJgames.com:

On the morning of March 1, without warning, a force of armed Secret Service agents โ€“ accompanied by Austin police and at least one civilian "expert" from the phone company โ€“ occupied the offices of Steve Jackson Games and began to search for computer equipment. The home of Loyd Blankenship, the writer of GURPS Cyberpunk, was also raided. A large amount of equipment was seized, including four computers, two laser printers, some loose hard disks and a great deal of assorted hardware. One of the computers was the one running the Illuminati BBS.

The only computers taken were those with GURPS Cyberpunk files; other systems were left in place. In their diligent search for evidence, the agents also cut off locks, forced open footlockers, tore up dozens of boxes in the warehouse, and bent two of the office letter openers attempting to pick the lock on a file cabinet.

The next day, accompanied by an attorney, Steve Jackson visited the Austin offices of the Secret Service. He had been promised that he could make copies of the company's files. As it turned out, he was only allowed to copy a few files, and only from one system. Still missing were all the current text files and hard copy for this book, as well as the files for the Illuminati BBS with their extensive playtest comments.

In the course of that visit, it became clear that the investigating agents considered GURPS Cyberpunk to be "a handbook for computer crime." They seemed to make no distinction between a discussion of futuristic credit fraud, using equipment that doesn't exist, and modern real-life credit card abuse. A repeated comment by the agents was "This is real."

Over the next few weeks, the Secret Service repeatedly assured the SJ Games attorney that complete copies of the files would be returned "tomorrow." But these promises weren't kept; the book was reconstructed from old backups, playtest copies, notes and memories.

On March 26, almost four weeks after the raid, some (but not all) of the files were returned. It was June 21, nearly four months later, when most (but not all) of the hardware was returned. The Secret Service kept one company hard disk, all Loyd's personal equipment and files, the printouts of GURPS Cyberpunk, and several other things.

The raid, and especially the confiscation of the game manuscript, caused a catastrophic interruption of the company's business. SJ Games very nearly closed its doors. It survived only by laying off half its employees, and it was years before it could be said to have "recovered."

Why was SJ Games raided? That was a mystery until October 21, 1990, when the company finally received a copy of the Secret Service warrant affidavit โ€“ at their request, it had been sealed. And the answer was . . . guilt by remote association.

While reality-checking the book, Loyd Blankenship corresponded with a variety of people, from computer security experts to self-confessed computer crackers. From his home, he ran a legal BBS which discussed the "computer underground," and he knew many of its members. That was enough to put him on a federal List of Dangerous Hoodlums! The affidavit on which SJ Games were raided was unbelievably flimsy . . . Loyd Blankenship was suspect because he ran a technologically literate and politically irreverent BBS, because he wrote about hacking, and because he received and re-posted a copy of the /Phrack newsletter. The company was raided simply because Loyd worked there and used its (entirely different) BBS!

As for GURPS Cyberpunk, it had merely been a target of opportunity . . . something "suspicious" that the agents picked up at the scene. The Secret Service allowed SJ Games (and the public) to believe, for months, that the book had been the target of the raid.

The one bright spot in this whole affair was the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In mid-1990, Mitch Kapor, John Barlow and John Gilmore formed the EFF to address this and similar outrages. It's a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the Constitutional rights of computer users.

...

An old EFF Newsletter from the 10h anniversary of the raid better describes the aftermath:

In an early morning raid with an unlawful and unconstitutional warrant, agents of the USSS conducted a search of the SJG office. They seized and removed, all in all, 3 computers, 5 hard disks and more than 300 floppies of software and data, and a book manuscript being prepared for publication. Among this equipment was the hardware and software of the SJG-operated Illuminati BBS (bulletin board system). The BBS served as a small-scale online service for gamers to participate in online discussions and to supply customer feedback to SJG. The BBS (today, the Internet service provide Illuminati Online) was also the repository of private electronic mail belonging to several of its users. This private e-mail was seized in the raid.

Yet Jackson, his business, and his BBS's users were not only innocent of any crime, but never suspects in the first place. The raid had been staged on the unfounded (and later proven false) suspicion that somewhere in Jackson's office there "might be" a document allegedly compromising the security of the 911 telephone system.

The Secret Service did not return the equipment, though legally required to do so and requested to do so many times, until sometime in the end of June of that year. When the equipment was returned more than three months after the raid, it became clear that someone at the USSS inspecting the disks had read and DELETED all of the 162 electronic mail messages contained on the BBS at the time of the raid. Not one of the users of the BBS was even under investigation by the Secret Service, and many of the messages had never even been read by their intended recipients.

In the months that followed the raid, Jackson saw the business he had built up over many years dragged to the edge of bankruptcy. SJG was a successful and prestigious publisher of books and other materials used in adventure role-playing games. Jackson had to layoff nearly half of his work force. Publication of at least one of his gaming books was delayed, resulting in loss of revenues to the company. He was written up in Business Week magazine as being a computer criminal. Jackson decided to fight back.

On May 1, 1991, Steve Jackson, the Steve Jackson Games company, and three users of the Illuminati BBS, with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed a civil suit against the United States Secret Service and some indivdually named agents thereof, alleging that the search warrant used during the raid was insufficient, since Steve Jackson Games was a publisher (publishers enjoy special protection under the Privacy Protection Act [PPA] of 1980), and that the protections against improper surveillance in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) had been violated with regard to the electronic mail on the system.

ECPA consists of a series of amendments to the federal Wiretap Act. It prohibits law enforcement officers from intentionally intercepting, using and/or disclosing the contents of private electronic communications without a warrant. The statute offers similar privacy protection for communications that are stored "incidental to the electronic transmission thereof" (e.g. on the hard drive of a BBS). The users of the Illuminati board claimed that their unread e-mail required a warrant specifically describing the messages to be searched. The Secret Service claimed that no special warrant was required under ECPA - in essence asking the court for license to go on uncontrolled "fishing expeditions" through citizens' private communications, in violation of Fourth Amendment principles. The court sided with Jackson and the other plaintiffs, berating USSS Agent Tim Foley - on the witness stand - for 15 minutes straight.

According to Mike Godwin, EFF Senior Policy Fellow, "the Steve Jackson Games case was the first case to underscore the intersection between civil liberties and the Internet. Our victory in that case sent a signal to the law-enforcement community that the days of unregulated searches and seizures of computers, and shut-downs of online publishers, were over."

The judge's official decision was announced on March 12, 1993. District Judge Sam Sparks awarded more than $50,000 in damages to Steve Jackson Games, citing lost profits and violations of the PPA. In addition, the judge awarded each BBS-user plaintiff $1,000 under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act for the USSS seizure of their stored electronic mail. The judge also ruled that plaintiffs would be reimbursed for their attorneys' fees. Plaintiffs filed an appeal, seeking to hold the USSS liable for "interception" in addition to "seizure" of the e-mail, on the grounds that e-mail still "in transit" if it has not yet been received by its recipients. This clarifying appeal was not successful, as the appellate court held, on a technicality, that "in transit" essentially means only "in transit, momentarily, across communication wires", not "in transit, by whatever medium, between sender and recipient". But the case remains a victory, establishing that at the very least, "stored" e-mail cannot be seized, examined or destroyed with impunity by law enforcement officers, and affirming, by clarifying the meaning of "in transit", that e-mail cannot be eavesdropped upon by police as it is being transmitted from system to system without a proper warrant.

...

So Steve and his team of proto-EFF lawyers sued the pants off the Secret Service. The lawsuit was filed in May of '91, but the legal decision wasn't made until the summer of '93. You can read the text of the opinion from Judge Sparks he linked at the bottom: When the Secret Service agents figured out they had officially violated the privacy of every user on the BBS, which was the day after the raid, they still neglected to return the confiscated equipment in a timely manner, leading to layoffs at the company and a delayed debut of their GURPS title, which led to financial hardship. He wasn't paid his $52,000 until the next year.

But Steve had more irons in the fire. In the summer of 1993, the latest sensation sweeping the nation was this program called Mosaic. With it you could use a modem to call a SLIP or PPP account and obtain your very own IP address! With that you could use [gopher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol%29)! It took a while but that same year Mosaic spread what we think of as modern internet service from Europe throughout the world. This Statesman article from February 12, 1994 tells the story:

The fast-growing Internet has tickled the entrepreneurial spirit of several Austin computer experts who have expanded or set up businesses to provide access to the worldwide system of computer networks. Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games said he is signing up about 10 new customers a day for the Internet access service he began in mid-1993. He said he has about 1,000 subscribers. George Wenzel, a partner in RealTime Communications, said he has had to add so many telephone lines since starting his service 18 months ago that Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. hasn't been able to keep up. He has 66 phone lines now, he said, and hopes to have 110 by the end of the month.

Smoot Carl-Mitchell, a partner in the newly launched Zilker Internet Park, is joining with the University of Texas to put on a conference in May entitled "Making Money on the Internet." "The explosive growth of global computer networking has attracted the attention of investment bankers, regulators, entrepreneurs and has become a fascination of the general public," says an announcement for the conference posted, of course, on the Internet. . .That "explosive growth" has captured the attention of businesses looking for ways either to tap a market of an estimated 15 million Internet users or to avoid being left behind by competitors.

Jn one of the more conspicuous recent examples, the Encyclopedia Britannica announced Monday that it plans to offer its materials to universities and some public libraries through the Internet. The reincarnation of the bulky volumes into electronic bits and bytes will be called Britannica Online. The Internet permits businesses around the world to communicate with each other and to transmit information quickly. An accounting firm, for instance, can ship spreadsheet data from the United States to Japan in an instant. But while there is no charge to use the Internet knowing how to get on the network and how to use its Unix computer language to send and retrieve information is not simple.

To reach Carl-Mitchell, for example, one must use his electronic -mail address: smoottil.com. The Internet access services provide customers with relatively easy access at low long-distance rates and with expertise on navigating the network. Carl-Mitchell, a former Austin City Council member, and his partner John Quarterman recently, wrote a book on how those who know computers can set up an operation to access Internet. Jackson, who is known for having won a major legal battle with the Secret Service over computer privacy issues, said Carl-Mitchell and Quarterman are "internationally recognized experts" on the Internet.

Nationally, there are about 500 such Internet access providers. The number of customers for each ranges from less than 100 to 10,000 or more. Larger national companies including Performance Systems International and UUNet Technologies have offered savvy computer users in Austin access to the Internet for years, but Jackson said the local companies offer far lower prices. "I know these big national services charge you $7 an hour, $11 an hour, things like that," Jackson said. "Some people are willing to pay that, because it's what the market will bear. But a competent operator can make money just fine charging 30 cents an hour."

Carl-Mitchell said the large national firms often are doing business with major users who want access to the Internet 24 hours a day. But he and the other Austin providers are tapping into the growing market of home and small -business users who might want access only a few hours a day, if that.

Prices vary depending on how much time a customer wants to spend on the Internet. Jackson, whose Steve Jackson Games also provides software for programs including games and offers other services like computer bulletin boards, said he charges $10 a month for 20 hours on the Internet, plus 50 cents an hour for time in excess of 20 hours. Zilker Internet starts at $20 a month for 20 hours and $1 per additional hour, Carl-Mitchell said. Wenzel of RealTime Communications said he goes for volume by charging $15 for 30 days with no . limit on total time, though no call may last more than an hour. He charges $75 for a year's usage. The capital investment is not huge; Carl-Mitchell has estimated that his equipment costs were $15,000. Zilker Internet should be profitable in three months if not sooner, he said.

But the real value of these entrepreneurs to their customers, many of whom have little or no knowledge of how to use the Internet, might lie in their know-how, not their equipment. Jackson said providing a connection to the Internet is not a simple operation because there are different levels and kinds of access. "Getting a system up on the Internet right now is still a lot like juggling eight plates," he said. "You don't step out there on the stage and, whoop, eight plates are in the air." Wenzel said that of his 1,500 customers, only about 1,000 actually use the service. "The other 500 are people who wanted it but didn't know what to do with it once they got it," he said. "That's a barrier the industry needs to overcome."

Wenzel said he and his partners plan classes for those who want to know how to use the Internet. Carl-Mitchell pitches his and his partner's widely acknowledged expertise and said it is not difficult to learn how to use the Internet. But the modem, the electronic device that enables a computer to dial into the telephone system and communicate with other computers, is another matter.

Modems, and the phone lines that they connect can be cranky, dropping connections or picking up interference that disrupts communication. "The hardest part of dealing with all of this is the modem' Carl-Mitchell said. "I won't kid you, it's a real pain." Jackson said his company and its employees pride themselves on helping new customers: "People coming in are right at the bottom of a very steep learning curve, and if the service provider is not willing to reach out a hand and help them up that ladder, forget it."

The next year the Statesman ran a glowing writeup on the success Steve Jackson was having with this internet thing.

1990 U.S. Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games had results that neither the government nor the Austin game-manufacturer could have foreseen at the time.

That raid prompted by the Secret Service's suspicion that one of Jackson's employees was involved in computer hacking helped bring "computer hacking" and all that term now connotes into the national consciousness. That was one thing that came out of that raid.

Jackson's company had been creating role-playing and adventure games games with titles such as Car Wars and the GURPS series (Generic Universal Role-Playing System) for years, and had started a bulletin board service in 1986. But the Secret Service shut that bulletin board down.

During the raid, the Secret Service seized some of Jackson's equipment even though neither Jackson nor his company were ever suspected in the case. That helped Illuminati Online lead to the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a legal and advocacy organization that has become the leading proponent of freedom of expression in cyberspace. The EFF took on Jackson's case against the government for violation of his computer communications rights. The Secret Service was eventually ordered to pay Jackson $52,000 for lost profits after a judge ruled that the Secret Service had illegally seized Jackson's equipment.

The formation of the EFF was another outcome of the Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games. "As a result of the flak that followed (the raid and its resulting legal battle), I became much more familiar with the Net," said Steve Jackson, who founded his namesake games company, "and my interest in it grew a great deal. We reincarnated our company's BBS as an Internet service provider in late 1993," he said. They called that new service Illuminati Online, named after another Steve Jackson Games title. So, Illuminati Online also grew out of that 1990 raid.

In the two years that the service has been on-line, it has grown to 2,100 users. The service has grown to maximum capacity in fact, and, until Southwestern Bell provides the company with additional lines, Illuminati Online cannot take on any new customers. "We couldn't take on new customers and continue to provide the same level of service to our old customers," Jackson said.

The company has a "no busy signal" policy and has made it a policy of adding new modems as peak demand increases. As soon as new phone lines are installed, the company wills tart processing new accounts.

One of the attractions to Illuminati Online users is the service's emphasis on gaming. Information on gaming companies and their products can be culled from Illuminati Online and the Illuminati Online Web page more than a dozen others in all.

There are links to World Wide Web gaming home pages, both official and unofficial, with information on miniatures, role-playing games, trading card games and board games. If you're interested in playing games rattier than finding out about or conversing about them, Illuminati is set up to help you there too.

From Illuminati Online, users can access a host of text-based, single and multiplayer games, playable over the Internet Users can play wargames, adventure games, dungeon crawls and more traditional games such as backgammon. And then there is the Metaverse. The Metaverse is the service's MOO (MUD Object-Oriented) a type of Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) where guests can explore a text-based environment, build onto it and converse with other players. "MUDs are primarily games where players run around and kill stuff," Jackson said, "MOOs have no fixed objectives; you can't kill characters in a MOO. But you can build things. The attraction of a MOO is showing off what you've built and being social." The center of the Metaverse is Free-gate, a "virtual city" that includes a central business district. Players can enter the district's stores and shop online, since all the stores in Freegate correspond to actual business. Fringe-ware has a store in the Metaverse, as do a number of gaming companies. The locations in the Metaverse are limited only by players' imaginations. The Metaverse contains a large fantasy area built by a user called Lucas. "That's almost a game unto itself," Jackson said. There's an Old West area, and an outer space area that people can visit by procuring spaceships and heading out into the wild blue yonder.

Players can create entire planets, if they are so inclined. "Pyramid Plaza contains a big park," said Jackson. "People have spent a lot of time working on descriptions in that area to make it feel like you're walking outside when you visit that area. The weather and seasons change in the park. You hear 'noise' when you go there. For instance, if you go there and sit down on a bench, you'll 'see' a butterfly fly by, you'll 'hear' children playing. The descriptions there aren't static ones. They're constantly changing. "I think this is pointing the way to the future of this kind of thing. In the future, I don't think computer games or multimedia entertainment will be a huge environment created by one person. I think the future is cooperatively created environments." Illuminati Online isn't all fun and games. It's an Internet service provider as well, which means it'll set you up with all the means for getting on and surfing the Internet Though the system's text-based interface can seem daunting to those used to using commercial services like America Online or Prodigy to do their on-line business, Illuminati's 24-hour access to live technical support and the service's extensive on-line help screens can ease some of that burden. The company provides PPP and SLIP access for those wanting to browse the World Wide Web, and has what is called a home-builder program that allows users to create their own rudimentary home page for the Web by filling out a simple on-line form. Illuminati Online doesn't charge its users for maintaining a home page on their system.

Illuminati Online has reached its current maximum capacity and Is not currently processing new accounts. As soon as Southwestern Bell installs new phone lines, however, new accounts will be processed. Reach Illuminati Online via voice at 462-0999 or modem at 448-8950. Access charges: dial direct for SB a month for 30 hours access time (and 50 cents an hour charges after that) or $28 a month for 80 hours access time (and 30 cents an hour after that). For SLIP/PPP access, Illuminati charges a one-time S50 setup and support charge, which includes a guidebook, connection software and help in getting the software up and running. After that set-up charge fees revert to the standard charges. If you already have Internet access, telnet to "io.com" to access the Illuminati Online features for $50 per month. You can also check out the Illuminati Online Web site at http://www.io.com. If you're interested in checking out the Meta-verse telnet to ""metaverse.io.com -7777" and type "connect guest" once the system responds. You'll then be able to explore the MUD using a guest character.

Needless to say the addresses don't work anymore. This 1995 Statesman directory has 12 ISPs in the Austin area. The internet killed the BBS like video killed the radio, despite what happened to AOL Then local ISPs were swallowed up by national media companies who controlled broadband access. What happened to Illuminati Online? There is a memorial page on SJgames.com that gives a life story:

Illuminati Online hit the Internet in 1993. But its roots go back to the dawn of Austin BBSing. It was originally the Illuminati BBS, a customer-support board for Steve Jackson Games.

The Illuminati BBS officially went online on April 1, 1986. It ran on T-Net software (written in BASIC) on an Apple ][+, with a screaming 300-baud modem. Our first hardware upgrade was a lower-case chip for the Apple . .

The sysop was Fearless Leader. The actual identity of Fearless Leader was officially a secret. It wasn't Steve. Who was it? Good question.

The board's original purpose was game playtesting, discussion, and customer support. But soon it was clear that the Illuminati's online community was interested in much more than just games. Over the next few years, the user base grew to more than 1,000 โ€“ most of them paying long-distance rates to call โ€“ to discuss everything related to science fiction, fantasy, comics, gaming and general High Weirdness.

As the years went by and the Illuminati community grew, we upgraded both software and hardware. Our first changeover was to Joe-Net, a homebrew system written by local programmer Joe DiMaggio. Joe-Net was easy to use, full of features, and ran on a MS-DOS system, giving us a lot more speed. We loved it. But eventually, Joe didn't have the time to maintain the system. (He'd written it for fun, and in the history of the world as we know it there have only been three Joe-Net systems. Too bad. Best software we ever had.) Fun with the Secret Service . . . Not!

Late in 1989, we switched to WWIV, a popular commercial software package which promised the capability to link to other BBSs nationwide. But that was not to be . . On March 1, 1990, the SJ Games offices were raided by the Secret Service, in a now-famous "hacker hunt." They took the Illuminati computer (among other things) and loads of software, including our WWIV disks.

The old Apple ][+ and T-Net were dragged out of the closet and pressed into service as an "answering machine" to tell callers what had happened โ€“ or as much as we knew. But Illuminati was down, and stayed down for a month.

When we came back up, it was as a two-line system, on new hardware (some of it donated by our supporters). We were now running MCD-2, a locally written multiline package. We continued to use MCD-2 until 1993.

The system continued to grow, now with a strong added interest in civil liberties of computer users. When the search warrant was finally unsealed, it showed that the original raid had been a groundless fishing expedition, based on ignorance.

In 1992 we switched to an Amiga, running a multiline package called DLG. This gave us a lot more capabilities, but still wasn't enough . . which was why we decided to go to the Internet and create this system. Victory In Court

With the help of the newly-formed Electronic Frontier Foundation, SJ Games and several users filed suit and won substantial awards. In early 1993, a federal judge ruled that the Secret Service had to pay for the mail it had taken and read, the equipment it had damaged, and other harm to SJ Games.

In August of 1993, the system added more than a dozen direct-dial lines and a T1 connection to the Internet, allowing for hundreds of simultaneous calls. Many new services were also added, including full Internet access for local callers and a vastly expanded conferencing system.

As of October 1998, the Illuminati Online service had more than 7,000 paying customers, connecting through 360 incoming dial-up lines in Austin, and a separate 48-line POP in Houston. We had a total of 48MB of bandwidth right out of the office, which at the time was a lot of network throughput for a company that primarily made tabletop games. So Illuminati Online was spun off as a separate company with its own offices on south IH-35 in Austin.

In February 2001, the ISP was reorganized as the IOCOM Corporation and focused primarily on providing Internet services. In July of that year IOCOM moved to new offices in North Austin and relocated equipment to a communication company property. That ended up not working out, because the company providing the space decided to get out of the Internet business. To avoid further unexpected interruptions, in October IOCOM leased offices and a dedicated datacenter in downtown Austin, right across the street from the Omni hotel. Having a technician available to answer the phone 24 hours a day was a step up from having to publish the main admin's home phone number on the website.

Over the years, technology changed and services all over the country expanded. Fewer and fewer people needed dial-up connections as broadband technology became more available. A lot of the businesses in Austin that used IO services had enough equipment to be ISPs in their own right. Consolidation was inevitable, and so in July 2004 Prismnet Ltd. bought the IOCOM assets and domain name. The shell hosts, web servers and other related systems continue to operate today. However, the io.com domain name finally went away in June 2011, purchased by a hosting company with a similar name.

So there you have the story of the most famous Secret Service raid in all of Austin's history that indirectly led to the creation of one of Austin's first and best pubic internet portals. About a year after io.com started offering ISP service there was another local company called Eden Matrix that became IO's competitor. Unlike IO this company was built on a foundation of bullshit. But I'll save that story for another day.

No bonus pics today but have a few bonus articles and links.

Bonus Link #1 - "Hacker Crackdown" (Cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling wrote an entire book about the SJG raid, and you can read it for free!)

Bonus Link #2 - "Text of the original complaint in Steve Jackson Games vs. U.S. Secret Service, as filed in U.S. Federal Court on May 1, 1991. (Yes, there do seem to be two Roman Numeral III sections. Fnord.)

Bonus Article #1 - "Information Superhighways" - November 25, 1991

Bonus Article #2 pg2 - "Just Browsing" (webpages in Austin) - March 2, 1995

Bonus Article #3 - "Concept does not compute" (editorial from Steve Jackson) - February 13, 1994

Bonus Article #4 - "Modem is not a loaded gun" (editorial) - March 22, 1993