e621 is no more

[pmart]

"e621 is over. sorry.

Thanks to numerous threats to our host, false claims of illegal content, harassment and a few things that are much worse, e621 is being closed down permanently. It's been fun running it. If you're looking for an alternative, try dammitfreehaven.com or something. If you want to come in and bitch at us, #e621 on irc.darkmyst.org will be a place you can do that. Or you can yell at me on twitter, twitter.com/ajkirwin or just email admin@e621.net and scream at me. Whatever.

And to all those who have lied and threatened and caused problems, well, congratulations. You got what you wanted I suppose. One site down, only about, what, fifty thousand left to go?

-- Arcturus"


I'm afraid I don't know much about e621.  Wikifur says there have been financial issues, resulting in a lot of downtime.  Why now, though...did a specific recent event cause this?

[sompret]

It's been reported that Insane Kangaroo, who is also infamous for being the center of Anthrocon's ban of open-carry, was the one who reported e621 to hostdudes with "false" claims that it's housing child pornography, which is kinda vague since he never specified if it's real CP or just cub porn or whatever.

In any case, he's like that annoying kid cousin who comes into your house and suddenly smashes your PS3/360, and that personally pisses me off.

[Kindrift]

This really got rolling on Watch Your Step, the forum run by wannabe FA admin Silverautomatic.  Dragoneer, intentionally or not, stirred WYS up against Arcturus.  The mentally ill on WYS took up a crusade, leading up to InsaneKangaroo threatening to tell the police that Arcturus is trafficking in child pornography.

Someone draws porn of the e621 mascot. Arc, being a fucking pansy dumbshit, goes to Princess Piche to PROTECT HIS TRADEMARK, and requests that it be taken down. Princess Piche posts Arc's request on Watch Your Step, the forums run by shitheel Silver-something. WYS exists just to make fun of people who are banned from FA, and gather support to ban more people, while slobbering all over the admins. This means that WYS is full of brainless sycophants. After Piche posted Arc's request, WYS decided that Arc needed to be destroyed. WYS poster InsaneKangaroo (who was banned from Anthrocon after declaring that he was going to get on an airplane with a gun and carry at the convention) decided to contact e6's upstream host, and their upstream, with claims of CP. With upstreams being pussy shits, they shut down e6.

And so yet another one of Arc's projects collapses into drama, because he's a fucking idiot, and so is everybody around him. Every single thing he's done has turned out this way, nobody should be surprised, gg uninstall, the end.

This thread on FA explains the coming problems just before they happened.  In summary, the thread states that it's a shame that this could legally happen to Arcturus, but Arcturus is also an annoying cunt and brought drama upon himself.

No matter what you think of me, I'm sure you can agree

Journal Entry: 5 hours ago    

that the following is wrong.

I now have a heap of shit to deal with thanks to [insanekangaroo], who has decided that the best way to get e621 'dealt with' is to gin up some fictitious claims of child pornography and then report e621 to our host and the owners of the datacenter.

I am hoping this can get resolved easier and that I don't lose my hosting. I mean, how would people here feel if FurAffinity was just suddenly cut off over something like this?

You can read more about it over here - http://e621.net/forum/show/8299

This is the post Arcturus made before he closed up shop:

Possible Site Troubles

Just so users are aware, we were reported to our hosting provider by a notoriously unstable furry who, interestingly enough, goes by 'insane kangaroo', on charges of child pornography.

As you know, we here are big defenders of first amendment rights and artistic freedom, but defending against such charges is notoriously tricky. It's possible that we COULD lose our hosting over this. It's believed that he not only contacted our server provider, but also the owners of the datacenter itself. So there's multiple possible ways for this to go bad.

Here is the email that we received, published because we feel it's of definite interest to our users (with personal information redacted):

===============

Dear Sir or Madam,

I'm writing in regards to a site e621.net hosting child pornography on your servers. I'll include a couple of examples below, but simply going to the site and typing in "child", "kid" or "loli" in the search box will provide materials which are child porn.

Site: http://www.e621.net

An example hosted on Softlayer
Site Link:
http://www.e621.net/post/show/92407/canine-chest_tuft-digimon-elbow_gloves-female-fox-
Where the image is on the server:
http://e621.net/data/sample/11/ea/sample_11ea80b74779864b295292b3e2748526.jpg

An example linked to an account on DreamHost Site Link:
http://e621.net/post/show/90878/animal_ears-blue_hair-braid-brown_eyes-bukkake-cat
Where the image is located:
http://baddragon.e621.inthesewer.net/data/1a/24/1a248331ab929308507a36e784979ac5.jpg

iroo-laptop:~ wolfe$ host e621.net
e621.net has address 173.192.209.70
e621.net mail is handled by 0 aspmx.l.google.com.
iroo-laptop:~ wolfe$ host 173.192.209.70 70.209.192.173.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer 173.192.209.70-static.reverse.softlayer.com.

iroo-laptop:~ wolfe$ host inthesewer.net inthesewer.net has address 69.163.156.53 iroo-laptop:~ wolfe$ host 69.163.156.53 53.156.163.69.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer apache2-snort.hawkman.dreamhost.com.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_cartoon_pornography_depicting_minors#United_States

Cartoons depicting pornography, even if said child is fictitious, does fall under 18 U.S.C. ?? 1466A Child pornography laws in the Unites States of America.

I'm also request a callback from an individual in legal regarding another matter of the site, gross violations of copyright and the ignoring of takedown notice and DMCA requests from artists. The site KNOWINGLY hosts infringing material.

Sincerely,
David Ross
{redacted}

[a pigeon]

Some stuff relating to this,

The e-mail Arcturus sent to Dragoneer, which was posted in a hidden forum on WYS by Dragoneer:

Sean Piche,

The works at issue are the images that appear on http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3537213/ and http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3558536/. This is an illegal use of our trademark, Hexerade.

You can reach me at arcturus[at]malicelabs.com for further information or clarification.

I have a good faith belief that use of the trademarked materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the trademark owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Arcturus Kirwin
August 28th, 2010

When Arcturus found out about the sharing of the e-mail he made this journal:

I'm quite interesting in knowing exactly what is going on involving me behind those closed doors.

I'm hearing a lot of shit and GETTING a lot of shit and I'd like to know who is saying what.

I've also had it reported that the E-MAIL I SENT TO DRAGONEER has been published there. Is this what you do, Dragoneer? People send you emails and you go and repost them on forums (or give them to people that do) for shits and giggles?

I stopped that years ago because it was a puerile thing to do. What next, are you going to start publishing peoples notes?

If you don't know what I'm talking about, it is silverautomatic's place over at http://wys.mirror.henriwatson.com/forums/

Edit: Update

So it WAS posted by Dragoneer himself. Good to know that emails you send to Dragoneer ARE NOT PRIVATE. And he even said this about it:

'Arcturus apparently needed a paper trail to write what anybody else could do civilly over of FA in about 20 seconds. A shame. Everybody else can use FA's note system just fine, but no, somebody drawing Arcturus' character without permission is a legal issue. MUST HAVE PAPER TRAIL. '

It's not MY CHARACTER, it is one of e621's TRADEMARKS. There's a world of fucking difference.

In regards to banning me: "if he had sent an actual DMCA form... then yes, I would have." So that's nice. Send a DMCA to FA, get a ban. Woo!

"We had to do the same thing to get our data back from FA. For the longest time, he outright refused to return FA's data from the original server when he was a mod. He wanted to use FA's data to build and create ArtPlz, which I mentioned would not be great in a legal stance... but he was pretty intent on using FA's raw data to create his site and import all users, comments, art, etc."

I never, EVER had ANY intention of doing that. When I was working on AP, it was going to start from scratch. And what's this 'we' shit. At the time, it was just Jheryn.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1673413/

An entry was made the above journal on furrydrama_2 on livejournal. Dragoneer was all over the entry and stated in one of his comments that people sometimes came to him saying their art from FA had been reposted on e621 and while he had always said in the past there was nothing he could do, however he said that in future he would tell people to DMCA e621. He also revealed a nasty little thing he'd done recently to try and get at Arcturus, namely that e621 did not qualify to use the alertpay system to accept donations, so they were using an account on inkbunny (furry art site which uses alertpay) to accept donations & So Dragoneer complained to Inkbunny who said this was not an issue (Dragoneer has naturally whined about people trying similar tricks on FA with paypal in the past). Dragoneer brought up 5 year old drama with Arcturus as well (the thing about artplz, which likely resulted in the edit to Arcturus' journal above).

On that furrydrama_2 entry, InsaneKangaroo mentioned he was getting together people to make complaints to e621's host, presumably reflecting his activities on WYS.

After e621's hosts received the complaints, Arcturus made this now deleted journal on FA:

that the following is wrong.

I now have a heap of shit to deal with thanks to insanekangaroo, who has decided that the best way to get e621 'dealt with' is to gin up some fictitious claims of child pornography and then report e621 to our host and the owners of the datacenter.

I am hoping this can get resolved easier and that I don't lose my hosting. I mean, how would people here feel if FurAffinity was just suddenly cut off over something like this?

You can read more about it over here - http://e621.net/forum/show/8299

Then after Arcturus closed e621 he made this journal entry:

I hope all you people who didn't like it are happy.

Closing message at e621.net

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1675364/

421 comments on that last one at the time of posting: most of it's back and forth between triumphal masturbating monkeys from WYS and people not pleased by e621 shutting down.

InsaneKangaroo started receiving shouts on his FA page from upset people and he was given special protection:

STAFF NOTICE: Whilst the staff of FA do not condone the actions of this user, harassment is not tolerated on Fur Affinity. Continuing to post even slightly harassing shouts/comments on this user's page WILL RESULT IN ACCOUNT SUSPENSION/TERMINATION without exception.
- 31/08/10, 9:20 PM (GMT+10)

I suppose Arcturus played right into Dragoneer's hands with the "illegal use of our trademark" & then taking e621 down, and Dragoneer behaved as is his wont in stirring things up with/against another furry site which is an FA alternative.

[Gunther]

And this, my friends, is why I will keep any furry art (however low grade quality it may be) that I draw to myself and not get involved in this 'fandom'.

[Sechs]

Fucking son of a bitch asshole cockeating puppyraping Barbara Streisand cumguzzling high fructose corn syrup loving DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIX! 

... *huff* *huff*

"Oh sure, I'll just direct the slavering, porn-hungry murrypurries desperate to get their fap on to a board that had trouble dealing with the traffic from the Jessica Elwood drama! That ought to fuck them up good and proper, even though they've never done anything to me! Totally appropriate retribution for my argument with someone else!"

[a pigeon]

Looks like it is coming back under someone else, an update posted on the site:

e621 will return soon!

A new administrator (Varka) has taken over responsibility for e621, and is going to be bringing the site back up over the next 24-48hrs. Any further questions you have or issues you wish to raise, please contact Varka at varka@e621.net. I will no longer be involved in the administration of the site. It was great while it lasted.

-- Arcturus
Message from Varka

That's right, folks - e621 will return, very soon. I'm currently transferring the site across to a new server and getting everything set up, and working on a few specific changes (most notably to the takedown policy), which I hope will improve matters for everyone.

The site may stay down for a while longer (possibly longer than 24-48hrs), because I'll be driving to Eurofurence shortly, but I will do all I can to get it up and online as soon as possible. My intention is to continue to improve e621, and to give it the stable platform it needs to remain open perpetually - and I hope that with everyone's help, we can keep this incredibly important furry art resource alive. If anyone has any questions or comments, then please feel free to contact me at varka@e621.net.

Now go play some goddamn Robot Unicorn Attack!

-- Varka

Varka is the person behind bad-dragon I think.

[Sechs]

You know, I've heard that name before in relation to servers and stuff... so is it the same Bad Dragon that does the, uh, custom dildos, and they also do webspace on the side, or what?

[Kindrift]

Yes, Varka is one of the Bad Dragon people.

e621 was useful, and often at the center of drama, because it had a fairly flippant attitude about intellectual property.  If you were an artist who wanted your work taken down, you'd need to ask nicely or they'd ignore your request.  Even then, Arcturus was rather shitty about it.  This fight started because Piche was throwing that attitude back in Arcturus' face, unfortunately he tried it at WYS where everybody is just a little bit too grade school to handle it.  But, that attitude discouraged artists from trying, and so it kept a lot of artwork on the site, which is very good for an archive.  It was funded by its userbase and didn't need to worry so much about what everyone thought of it.

Bad Dragon, however, lives off of its adult toy sales.  It needs its wares advertised through Narse's artwork and its banner adverts on FA.  And, like it or not, that name is now linked to e621.  I expect they'll need to play nice with artists, FA staff, and the spastic vigilantes at WYS to maintain their income.  As a result, it's probably going to run like Furpiled does now, with a fat DNP list and less artwork.

[ponoiro]

You know, I've heard that name before in relation to servers and stuff... so is it the same Bad Dragon that does the, uh, custom dildos, and they also do webspace on the side, or what?

Varka seems to be in the habit of collecting failed furry sites.  e621.net isn't the first site he has saved, he has also stepped in when AGNPH was shutting down and (if I remember correctly) he also saved http://rule34.paheal.net/ .  The salvaging of these furry porn distributors is probably a safe return on investment via the creation of fantasy fetish fuel and having an extremely high profit margin on custom dildos.

[Sechs]

he also saved http://rule34.paheal.net/ .  The salvaging of these furry porn distributors is probably a safe return on investment via the creation of fantasy fetish fuel and having an extremely high profit margin on custom dildos.

But Rule 34 isn't furry... I mean, it's got plenty of furry characters, but...

... Hm. Maybe Bad Dragon should start buying and reselling those "K-On Ona-holes" they're always yammering about on Sankaku, to capitalize on all the non-furry porn from Rule 34...

Edit: And for fucksakes I'm joking please don't think I'm giving them inventory advice. 

[sompret]

Yes, Varka is one of the Bad Dragon people.

e621 was useful, and often at the center of drama, because it had a fairly flippant attitude about intellectual property.  If you were an artist who wanted your work taken down, you'd need to ask nicely or they'd ignore your request.  Even then, Arcturus was rather shitty about it.  This fight started because Piche was throwing that attitude back in Arcturus' face, unfortunately he tried it at WYS where everybody is just a little bit too grade school to handle it.  But, that attitude discouraged artists from trying, and so it kept a lot of artwork on the site, which is very good for an archive.  It was funded by its userbase and didn't need to worry so much about what everyone thought of it.

Bad Dragon, however, lives off of its adult toy sales.  It needs its wares advertised through Narse's artwork and its banner adverts on FA.  And, like it or not, that name is now linked to e621.  I expect they'll need to play nice with artists, FA staff, and the spastic vigilantes at WYS to maintain their income.  As a result, it's probably going to run like Furpiled does now, with a fat DNP list and less artwork.

So you're saying that Varka picking up e621 is like Bobby Kotick picking up a failed franchise? That's just worrying.

[a pigeon]

Dragoneer, in two comments on yet another Furrydrama_2 entry about this event, explained how he expected e621 to operate in future and a DNP list does indeed feature:

So, if Varka implements a DNP, listens to take down requests, I'm cool with that. However, if e621 remains status quo...

I imagine it may hurt him and the people associated with Bad Dragon (which is a legit, well run business).

Given that Dragoneer has, for example, removed furbuy's advert on FA in a fit of pique after it's head said that FA wasn't very well run, Varka will indeed have to be careful if he wants to keep his adverts up.

Another comment:

I'll give Varka the benefit of the doubt, and hope he can pull it off (AND PROPERLY!). But I have issues with a furry "company" buying out a site known for shitting on artists, ignoring their rights and treating them like crap. I imagine he'll use e621 to promote Bad Dragon, but if so, he's going to have to make changes to the entire way e621 works (basically, it won't be e621 anymore) otherwise furs will rage, protest and boycott Bad Dragon for using an art theft site to sell their products.

Bad Dragon already advertises on other sites that engage in art theft, and that's honestly not cool in my book. Respect the artists are don't, but don't advertise on art sites that steal their content and disrespect artist's intents for your mature toys.

I'm sure Dragoneer will be happy to stir people up into a rage, to protest and boycott bad dragon if they don't do as he expects them to, and WYS will be more than happy to jump into it.

There's probably also a bit of underlying tension there with bad-dragon, regardless of anything else, what with Dragoneer not tending to get on well with other people who have things in furry that are outside his control.

[loki]

The should just host their sites in Sweden. Would be a lot harder trying to send a DMCA there I would think....

Overall I think this whole thing is pretty freaking stupid; Arcturus just seems like a real douche so he probably deserved to have his site taken down IMO.

[rodox_video]

It gets better. So, so much better.

According to his FA page, Varka is apparently involved with Cryptocloud, a shady Relakks-style VPN service.

Cryptocloud was co-founded by Doug Spink. Yes, that Doug Spink. It's a subsidiary of Baneki, which was his last front company before his arrest in April.

Although Spink is in prison currently, there is evidence that his organization has survived intact. His most sensitive sites were wiped IMMEDIATELY after the arrest, including a forum loaded with evidence. A libel campaign was carried out by unknown persons against an animal welfare activist who sought to document the whole operation (and found a treasure trove of fairly damning information in the process). There are clearly people on the outside maintaining his online presence.

I can't believe nobody noticed this earlier. I can't believe I didn't notice this earlier. The new head of e621 is connected to a dogfucker even worse than EbonLupus.

[LordNagetiere]

The should just host their sites in Sweden. Would be a lot harder trying to send a DMCA there I would think....

Sweden would be a rough choice, the shut down the VCL server for what was on it, no? Maybe somewhere in Asia or Russia would be better. That said, though, I did think e621's gelbooru system works well for furry smut, and would like to see a similar setup in other sites.

[Jim Demintia]

IK and Silverautomatic are two people for whom their entire furry existence seems to be defined by drama. They're both extremely immature personalities and have little if any self-control. Silverautomatic is young (20-21 years old) and has a major case of swollen ego, as can be evidenced by the giant murrsona portrait on the background of his WYS blog. So while he can be sort-of forgiven for the sin of youth, one person whose apparent mental illness has no excuse is Insane Kangaroo. He's mentioned that he's been to Alaska, I would assume doing contracting work for oil companies (just like Dragoneer ran away from his massive life failure to Kyrgystan or whatever it was), and right now he's somewhere in PA. He's one of those people who wants to be a cop (i.e. carry a metal penis/gun on the job) real bad, and he's unstable enough that even in today's world of vastly lowered psychological standards for police and military he apparently can't get a job as such. So he does what everyone like that does, looks for any excuse he can to hang around or interact with the police, because it gives him a giant boner. He was involved in the Blazger-is-a-pedo thing a while back, as detailed here. He's extreme enough to make even the most hardened channer hesitate, if even for a minute. He gets worked up over very little and always rockets to 600 mph in a matter of seconds.

I don't know about Silver, but it's only a matter of time before IK does something so massively stupid that it causes permanent consequences for him or others.

[AshleyAshes]

I have a good faith belief that use of the trademarked materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

Of course, copyright has NOTHING to do with trademark.  Sure an image can be copyrighted and trademarked but that's two different things applying to the same graphic.  Trademarks are quite literally marks of trade.  To enforce an unregistered trademark you have to go to court and not only assert that it's a trademark of your own but then also prove how it is a mark of trade inorder to get a judgement agianst the other guy.  Copyright you just go 'MINE' and have some dated proof that you did indeed create the work.  Hell people can take you to court to REVOKE your trademark if it's overly generic or you arn't even using it for trade.  I actually don't even think the mascot for some free internet site counts as 'trade' at all.  So this copyright nonsense has NOTHING to do with an original piece of artwork of the sites mascot.

[Sechs]

Well, Arcturus showed up to throw a tantrum on TGFB.

I considered banning him (and telling him I'd reported him for CP, just to make his week worse), but decided nah... it's actually kind of funny watching him lose it. Especially now that his li'l baby is Bad Dragon's bitch.

ETA: Well I wasn't going to...

[rodox_video]

So how exactly did Arcturus choose who to dump the site on? Did he know about Varka's connections? Does he care?