In the case of a BBS, you can typically find someone to even come to your house and set things up for you. Then again, netetiquette and the like are best learnt at the local level, so that costly international flame wars and other wasteful uses of bandwidth are avoided. In attempting to propagate a GII, we should not try to change the world. The Internet will do that on its own. Jerry Pournelle predicted in the late seventies or early eighties that the Soviet empire would collapse.
Any totalitarian regime has a hard time dealing with PCs, which are like illegal printing presses.
But the problem becomes much more severe for such regimes when such machines get hooked onto the Internet. Arthur Koestler said something to the effect that the free flow of information would be the death of totalitarianism. The people on the Internet are very jealous of their freedom to communicate, and since newcomers quickly learn the same values, we can expect the Internet to continue to be a positive force for change. Ultimately, the only defence we have against encroachment on our rights is people who are aware and willing to act. This seems to be the dominant culture on the Internet - may it prosper.