[VPCII]

The content was produced by users under the guise of helping others and posting it in a public place.

Publicly accessible is not the same as a public space. It was still privately hosted or am I mistaken?

You can talk about who owns the rights to what but just like YouTube the owner, in this case, didn't generate content, he just housed it.

YouTube has the lawyers to make that argument, and very deep pockets to dissuade bad actors from even attempting to bring it before a court.

It's akin to getting free storage at a warehouse and then having all your stuff stolen when the warehouse is decommissioned/emptied and razed to the ground.

No, it isn't akin, or even in the same ballpark. Not even the same sport. It is data. What do you do with data you don't want to lose? You make a backup. If you push things only to the web and expect them to exist in perpetuity, you must be naive or have a small sample rate. You could be arguing in bad faith, but I don't really care.

[...] the one thing we won't get back is the personal testimonies of the people who actually lived the experiences of administration and field support for the systems. That is the on-site history of SGI as far as the public is concerned. Because it was running while SGI was still in business and even included old timers that used to be employees that would tell stories. That has its own value independent of the technical support aspect.

Too bad GDPR compliance and sociopath users ruined that part of the web.

It was the focused participation and effort by many thousands of people over many years. That lost effort is the true cost.

Guess you just had to have been there. Now who will make videos for clout by reading decades old posts for some shit they never got to be a part of? Guess the MOPs and sociopaths lose again, killing the golden goose one like button at a time.

Your response encapsulated everything I said about drama. Pete did the right thing.