Netesq is the online alias of David F. Prenatt, Jr. dba Internet Esquire. During his tenure as a student at UC Davis Law School, David was a frequent poster to USENET where his byline attracted many queries about law school, UC Davis, and the city of Davis, California. This inspired David to publish the King Hall Law School USENET FAQ and a series of other USENET FAQs that paved the way for David's work as an Internet consultant for attorneys.

David also worked as a volunteer editor for the Open Directory Project (ODP) where he was awarded the status of "editall" shortly before his editing privileges were revoked in April of 2000. After losing his ODP editing privileges, David founded the XODP eGroup as a free speech forum where ODP expatriates, ODP malcontents, and various other critics of ODP could discuss the future of the open content movement. XODP has since evolved into a business enterprise as well as a think tank and free speech forum for progressive ideas about how the Internet should be indexed.