TIL during the early days of the internet, companies tried to prohibit linking to some of their sites. The linked site linked to all of them during half of 2002
In one of the even more absurd cases: According to an APreport (cited in Slashdot), Intentia International has filed criminal charges against Reuters PLC, alleging that the news service illegally obtained an earnings report that the company had not yet released, by guessing the URL at which it had been posted on Intentia's public web site. Intentia claims that the report was "not available through normal channels," according to AP. (Also see Financial Times and CNET News.com reports.) DES
Nah, the 90s were the early days of the internet being popular, with AOL launching their internet service in 1991 and even The Today Show talking about the internet in 1994. While 2002-internet isn't the same as today's internet, it was far from the early days by that point.
The early days of web 2.0. Around the early 2000s the internet changed from being a web where content creators were few with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content to a web where everyone was making their own sites and content.
From wikipedia:
A Web 2.0 website allows users to interact and collaborate with each other through social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. This contrasts the first generation of Web 1.0-era websites where people were limited to viewing content in a passive manner.