Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992. This created the open Internet as we know it today.
And who was the main guy behind that bill? Yes, Al Gore. http://w2.eff.org/Legislation/Bills_by_name/Old/info_infra_t...
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.
That prevented any kind of serious growth. It was great for academics. Then, something happened. Somebody, somewhere, decided that it was ok to use those government-paid lines for business. Who made that decision and when? I don't know, but they deserve a lot of credit as well.