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The first isp in the UK to offer
full dial-up internet access to consumers. Demon Internet's "tenner-a-month"
pricing policy and its full range of internet services established the model
for British isps, which was only recently superseded by free-access
providers such as freeserve. Founded in 1992 by Cliff Stanford, Demon
started with modest ambitions, aiming for200members in its first year and
4.500 by the end of 1995, a figure it exceeded by a factor of 10. By May
1998 the total number of subscribers exceeded 180,000. The company was sold
to Scottish Power for pound66m later that year. In April 2000 Demon agreed
to pay damages to Laurence Godfrey, who took action against the company for
refusing to remove allegedly libellous comments about him from newsgroup
posting. The case caused some panic in the British isp community, for
which the prospect of being held responsible for the content of over 1m
newsgroup messages a day was not a welcome one. Demon is now owned by Thus,
a telecoms company, which was demerged from the ScottishPower group in 2002.
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