I'm quietly amused by people calling Napster and AOL the "early Internet". The early Internet was 1974.
Yes, people are rediscovering all sorts of things from the #BBS days, from asynchronous conversations through supporting one's local sysop to having a plethora of mail reader programs; and (as we've talked about before) big centralized corporate paid-subscription #CompuServe & #BIX versus distributed #FidoNet.