ARMAHOLIC website not working

[EO 11275]

So you guys think Scotland is some dead-end backwater?  Even in the remotest areas of Scotland we have internet access and wifi....some of us even have thumbs.  

[NightIntruder 710]

On 6/2/2021 at 2:19 PM, darkxess said:

@jerryhopper can you stop what you are doing by scraping data? 

If Foxhound is truly concerned about preserving all the data for the community, it shouldn't bother him what jerryhopper was doing, as the goal is exactly the same. Since he blocked the data scraping, his words contradict his deeds.

 

On 6/2/2021 at 2:19 PM, darkxess said:

Also if you are wondering why your emails are going unanswered then maybe think why, getting over 500+ emails in the first 24 hours of the tweet really didn't make things easier, imagine replying to all of them? 

There is a perfect solution for that every mature man knows - communicating with the community straight, honest, open and in public. Here. If he had done it right from the very beginning, he wouldn't have found hundreds of emails of "spam" in his e-mail box.

 

On 6/2/2021 at 2:19 PM, darkxess said:

Edit: Foxhound is fine, he doesn't have COVID and he simply just met a woman in Scotland and decided to fall in love 😊

 

I've been in love with my wife for almost 30 years and been treated in a hospital a couple of times. I haven't stopped breathing, thinking, using the internet or talking with people in the meantime.

I am skeptical. Whatever is going on in this case, the "channel of communication" through his friend, the whole mystery, and the signs of unclear intentions (did he declare that he waits for offers??), all of this is convincing me to not trust this guy anymore. Later I am gonna maile him asking for the removal of my addons from "his" database as their source materials were ported under the "non-commercial" caveat. I'm gonna do it just in case he really wants to sell something. He can fail his contributors if he so wishes, I am not going to. This is the only thing I can do for my contributors in this matter, sadly.

[MarineRecon191 10]

6 hours ago, NightIntruder said:

 

addons from "his" database as their source materials were ported under the "non-commercial" caveat. I'm gonna do it just in case he really wants to sell something. He can fail his contributors if he so wishes, I am not going to. This is the only thing I can do for my contributors in this matter, sadly.

  If you do not mind me asking, would you happen to have any ARMA 2 CO mods that you made, and that you still have?

[NightIntruder 710]

10 hours ago, MarineRecon191 said:

  If you do not mind me asking, would you happen to have any ARMA 2 CO mods that you made, and that you still have?

Perhaps,some of my dev packs survived on my external HDDs, but most of those worth of publishing were released by Unsung and CUP anyway, so I didn't need them anymore. Sorry mate, I havn't thought that something like this could ever happen. 

[Αplion 1122]

So nice darkxess ... because someone here acted wrong and maybe selfish or maybe because you don't like his breath ... the whole community is blamed and has to pay the price ... so nice ... I'm tired even reading all these "shit" (sorry) ... AH is gone with all its "treasure" together and only AH has to be blamed for that. Case closed for me.

[darkxess 60]

11 minutes ago, Αplion said:

So nice darkxess ... because someone here acted wrong and maybe selfish or maybe because you don't like his breath ... the whole community is blamed and has to pay the price ... so nice ... I'm tired even reading all these "shit" (sorry) ... AH is gone with all its "treasure" together and only AH has to be blamed for that. Case closed for me.

No mate, that was only the MAIN reason, I didn't mention all the selfish, ungrateful, nasty, hate posts, messages, emails, that we have received for simply (closing down) did Foxhound deserve it? did I deserve it even though I was doing my best to help? well...?  I get your point of not the whole community, you are right! and for those people, I feel sorry for, but a majority is selfish and hateful and why should Foxhound or even I try to support those kinds of people?

Foxhound owed no one ANYTHING, he has a right to do as he likes! Remember that.

[krzychuzokecia 717]

11 minutes ago, darkxess said:

he has a right to do as he likes

Except things that may be

36 minutes ago, darkxess said:

illegal!

Examples of "illegal" things that come to mind in this case are: selling 3rd party intellectual property without consent/compensation; or selling website users data (including private information protected under GDPR) to a 3rd party (new website owners). So, I dunno what is the plan you guys have, but before you accuse others of illegal activity* you better think about your own actions.

 

...unless you plan to move to some country further away from EU courts than Scotland.

 

* I'm not sure if accessing a public web/FTP server that's not protected can be considered an illegal activity.

[fingolfin 1972]

27 minutes ago, darkxess said:

No mate, that was only the MAIN reason, I didn't mention all the selfish, ungrateful, nasty, hate posts, messages, emails, that we have received for simply (closing down) did Foxhound deserve it? did I deserve it even though I was doing my best to help? well...?  I get your point of not the whole community, you are right! and for those people, I feel sorry for, but a majority is selfish and hateful and why should Foxhound or even I try to support those kinds of people?

Foxhound owed no one ANYTHING, he has a right to do as he likes! Remember that.

 

That is right, he owes nobody anything, at least now that the mod files are gone and will not be sold. (Yes, I know, the offer was regarding the framework/database... but most of the value came from the implicit promise of getting access to the files). Otherwise, I would have had major issues with that as a content creator whose early work was hosted on AH.

 

But it is naïve to think, this way of ending Armaholic would not hurt ones reputation in many ways, especially with the (non-)communication after the shutdown of the site.

[SzepyCZ 24]

2 hours ago, darkxess said:

No mate, that was only the MAIN reason, I didn't mention all the selfish, ungrateful, nasty, hate posts, messages, emails, that we have received for simply (closing down) did Foxhound deserve it? did I deserve it even though I was doing my best to help? well...?  I get your point of not the whole community, you are right! and for those people, I feel sorry for, but a majority is selfish and hateful and why should Foxhound or even I try to support those kinds of people?

Foxhound owned no one ANYTHING, he has a right to do as he likes! Remember that.

Oh right, so basically over last 15 years he was literally craving over all addon/mission threads for being able/allowance to host them on AH, even makes an updates posts, literally builds his reputation as RELIABLE mirror creator/owner/whatever, which(unfortunately) led to believe that he actually cares about arma addons/community, and that AH is a RELIABLE mirror, and then immidiately shuts down everything without further warning or something, if he actually made a post for example "AH service costs more then i can afford even with donates/subscriptions, unfortunately i have to shut it down, but if community wants to support me (paypal link/whatever) and there would be enough money donated to cover the last years cost i will make whole website available for rehosting somewhere else" or because of some personal issues, everyone would understand it but no, instead he behaves like a biggest [...](yes i know that he returned subscriptions, but that doesnt change anything) and shuts down everything without further warning/some apologize/statement.

 

And yes, he own this community a BIG statement on why, because remember, there were hundreds of content creators who relied on AH services(again because he built his reputation as reliable arma related host), and boom now everything is gone, so yes, only AH/foxhound is to blame, and nothing will change that, maybe he should have thought about the fact that he managed to build the biggest arma related(and RELIABLE!) site before closing it down with no apparent reason and without time to make some backups,after all, he had 15 years to do that.

 

and btw, if you think that what jerryhopper did is something illegal/immoral, i will give you an advice, dont even look at what facebook/google/microsoft is doing(and what you are able to do with simple google search bar), because then after realizing it you would spend rest of your life locked in your basement.

Edited June 9, 2021 by Dedmen
Cleaned up by moderator

[Αplion 1122]

38 minutes ago, darkxess said:

No mate, that was only the MAIN reason, I didn't mention all the selfish, ungrateful, nasty, hate posts, messages, emails, that we have received for simply (closing down) did Foxhound deserve it? did I deserve it even though I was doing my best to help? well...?  I get your point of not the whole community, you are right! and for those people, I feel sorry for, but a majority is selfish and hateful and why should Foxhound or even I try to support those kinds of people?

Foxhound owed no one ANYTHING, he has a right to do as he likes! Remember that.

 

Dark ... for members community AH was just a database offered to community members gathering - indexing everything was/is already been into BI forum. People (badly IMHO) depended on it, but this was a mistake as there was nothing official.

Based on that, nobody should be blamed for current situation.

 

Fox is a respectful friend for me as many times in the past has helped me a lot. In my mind he should know (I'm sure he knew) the power that had in his hands as this database keeper. So if he decided to quit for his own reasons, he had an "obligation" to transfer this to someone else to continue. He will not get his money back, but this community was never based on money and donations (so far).

 

Anyway ... as I said case is closed for me ... I'll not blame anyone and I don't like expressions as "illegal, selfish, ungrateful, nasty, hate posts, etc". 

[Dedmen 2700]

1 hour ago, darkxess said:

me and carried on scraping files from a network you basically hacked into which was illegal!

The post you linked showed nothing illegal.

Browsing a publicly visible website is not illegal, downloading files from a publicly visible file sharing website is not illegal.

 

What however seems illegal in my mind is selling people a database of:
- Content that wasn't permitted to be hosted in armaholic in the first place but was still done so

- TONS of content with a non-commercial license that was permitted to be hosted on armaholic, but definitely in not allowed to be sold

 

And assuming the "database" really means database, if it includes login/user data for the forum (which I understand would be included when you say "database") then I hope but don't expect that people will not come at you with all their might for violating their privacy and online security.

 

 

And in your place I'd be careful with publicly accusing someone of doing illegal things (which visiting a publicly visible website isn't) and threatening legal actions for it.

 

What it looks like from my POV is just a "Oh no! They are getting the files that we want to sell for free! we gotta stop them".

[WGP 91]

There you go then.

 

Our group has access to all the mods, addons, most full conversions, scripts etc that were on AH from 2007/8 - 2020 (early 2020), some limited after that.

There are no mission/scenarios and limited Arma 3 stuff, these were of no value for our gameplay.

 

We have a huge amount of AH stuff ourselves, but didn't know for sure if it was complete, so we reached out to friends to ask if they had AH covered, we thought they may have. They comfirmed that they had, if not everything, more or less everything. They stated that if it was publically downloadable from AH from 2007/8 - 2020 and concerned Arma, Arma 2, Arma 2 OA plus dlc's, they said they had it.

Unfortunately they won't share with this community either, I didn't ask why.

 

We are still prepared to share what our group have, provided those interested can tell us what it is they want, we'll look and check and if it's there (from our own collection), we'll put it up on dropbox or similar for a short while, for players to download, then remove it.

The offers there anyway.

 

Goodluck for the future to foxhound and anyone that helped make AH the 'one stop spot, for all Arma related mods etc.

[darkxess 60]

52 minutes ago, krzychuzokecia said:

Except things that may be

Examples of "illegal" things that come to mind in this case are: selling 3rd party intellectual property without consent/compensation; or selling website users data (including private information protected under GDPR) to a 3rd party (new website owners). So, I dunno what is the plan you guys have, but before you accuse others of illegal activity* you better think about your own actions.

 

...unless you plan to move to some country further away from EU courts than Scotland.

 

* I'm not sure if accessing a public web/FTP server that's not protected can be considered an illegal activity.

Assumptions are not nice, are they? I clearly said before that the Community Files were NOT for sale! just the domain, website, and part of the DB which would preserve the categorized file structure, etc.

[darkxess 60]

48 minutes ago, fingolfin said:

 

That is right, he owes nobody anything, at least now that the mod files are gone and will not be sold. (Yes, I know, the offer was regarding the framework/database... but most of the value came from the implicit promise of getting access to the files). Otherwise, I would have had major issues with that as a content creator whose early work was hosted on AH.

 

But it is naïve to think, this way of ending Armaholic would not hurt ones reputation in many ways, especially with the (non-)communication after the shutdown of the site.

As I mentioned before (Fox was away in Scotland, I was dealing with stuff and trying my best to sort it out). So there was communication and something was being done, so what if the site JUST shut down, shit happens! 

[Texeiro 15]

I  made a small contribution to the comunity . Foxhound without asking  published it in AH. There was no problem, as I wanted to share mi work. Then, I found he was asking for money..... And later his friend (It seems as a second  Foxhound account to me) post he deletes all....I guess, that he was afraid about legal problems regarding selling content created by 3rd parties or a rage quit properly form a child.  FX owed the community. He was making money sharing content not created by him. no one asked him to share the benefit of this, but at leas he could have had a more elegant output by creating a torrent for example. Justifying your actions is unfortunate. It was always about money. May it serve us as learning as a community. It is a shame the loss, but we will continue forward, creating, sharin, etc.... The world keeps spinning, with or without AH .AH will always be a good memory. Foxhound no.

1 hour ago, darkxess said:

I deleted them!

[darkxess 60]

2 hours ago, SzepyCZ said:

Oh right, so basically over last 15 years he was literally craving over all addon/mission threads for being able/allowance to host them on AH, even makes an updates posts, literally builds his reputation as RELIABLE mirror creator/owner/whatever, which(unfortunately) led to believe that he actually cares about arma addons/community, and that AH is a RELIABLE mirror, and then immidiately shuts down everything without further warning or something, if he actually made a post for example "AH service costs more then i can afford even with donates/subscriptions, unfortunately i have to shut it down, but if community wants to support me (paypal link/whatever) and there would be enough money donated to cover the last years cost i will make whole website available for rehosting somewhere else" or because of some personal issues, everyone would understand it but no, instead he behaves like a biggest [...](yes i know that he returned subscriptions, but that doesnt change anything) and shuts down everything without further warning/some apologize/statement.

 

And yes, he own this community a BIG statement on why, because remember, there were hundreds of content creators who relied on AH services(again because he built his reputation as reliable arma related host), and boom now everything is gone, so yes, only AH/foxhound is to blame, and nothing will change that, maybe he should have thought about the fact that he managed to build the biggest arma related(and RELIABLE!) site before closing it down with no apparent reason and without time to make some backups,after all, he had 15 years to do that.

 

and btw, if you think that what jerryhopper did is something illegal/immoral, i will give you an advice, dont even look at what facebook/google/microsoft is doing(and what you are able to do with simple google search bar), because then after realizing it you would spend rest of your life locked in your basement.

Foxhound needn't explain anything! he was nothing more than an Arma lover that chose out of his own heart to host files, run a website, and provide for the community, he DID provide for you all for 15 whole years with not much support or backing at all, and as you should know not everything lasts forever and at some point in life you just wake up and think to yourself, why am I doing this? then just make a change, HE DID just that so stop complaining.

Backups? everything was there until the day the site went offline, I just deleted it all, I mean think of this yea - when we tried to get files OR do anything it was almost impossible due to the stupid hackers and throttling the server, it was so bad any file we were trying to get was corrupted! so blame those who ignored my appeals to (stop what you are doing, we are sorting it out) which I said more than once! 

 

-- Removed by moderator --

Edited June 9, 2021 by Dedmen

[darkxess 60]

35 minutes ago, Αplion said:

Fox is a respectful friend for me as many times in the past has helped me a lot. In my mind he should know (I'm sure he knew) the power that had in his hands as this database keeper. So if he decided to quit for his own reasons, he had an "obligation" to transfer this to someone else to continue. He will not get his money back, but this community was never based on money and donations (so far).

Database Keeper? Obligation? em... not at all, he did what he wanted as a fan of the game and it was like a hobby to him too. He did try to pass it onto someone else but then people chose to steal and break into his fileserver without permission, then all the hate comments, mail, etc as I said before why should he happily help those calling him and threatening him? would you? I bloody well wouldn't.

[Dedmen 2700]

15 minutes ago, darkxess said:

[...] DID HACK the database AND shared it with everyone else here

Forum moderator: Unless you're willing to show proof of actual wrongdoing, I suggest you keep your accusations to yourself

 

Quote

So if I hacked into the BIS private fileserver I am doing nothing wrong? yea bullshit! you know it! 

I saw nothing of anyone breaking into any private fileserver here. If you have proof then show it, if not, then stop accusing people.

 

 

Quote

And another thing, it was CONFIRMED that the files and people's login info, etc were NOT for sale as I said more than once within this thread!
The only thing for sale was the Website, Domain, Database of the website, though (accounts, community files, images of users, etc were not for sale AND will only be given to the rightful person to carry on Foxhounds work).

So.. you're only selling part of the data, but the rest of the data is free, but also only given to the person who bought the paid stuff?

 

Doesn't sound free to me.

And giving accounts and community files and images of users as you list away for free also doesn't sound right to me..

 

3 minutes ago, darkxess said:

one via loopholes is HACKING!

Accessing a website via its publicly available IP address is not hacking.

[SzepyCZ 24]

 

1 hour ago, darkxess said:

Foxhound needn't explain anything! he was nothing more than an Arma lover that chose out of his own heart to host files, run a website, and provide for the community, he DID provide for you all for 15 whole years with not much support or backing at all, and as you should know not everything lasts forever and at some point in life you just wake up and think to yourself, why am I doing this? then just make a change, HE DID just that so stop complaining.

Backups? everything was there until the day the site went offline, I just deleted it all, I mean think of this yea - when we tried to get files OR do anything it was almost impossible due to the stupid hackers and throttling the server, it was so bad any file we were trying to get was corrupted! so blame those who ignored my appeals to (stop what you are doing, we are sorting it out) which I said more than once! 
 

i hope foxhound is proud of himself that he single-handedly managed to destroy game/addons preservation for older arma games, that’s all what i have to say, instead of passing it to someone else so "his legacy as an biggest arma site creator would continue" and he would look like the "good one", he chose to behave like a [...], closed everything without further warning and now tries to sell it, hope he’s proud of himself and the legacy he chose to make will stick with him 

[fingolfin 1972]

7 minutes ago, darkxess said:

And another thing, it was CONFIRMED that the files and people's login info, etc were NOT for sale as I said more than once within this thread!
The only thing for sale was the Website, Domain, Database of the website, though (accounts, community files, images of users, etc were not for sale AND will only be given to the rightful person to carry on Foxhounds work).

 

And exactly this makes the whole scheme seem fishy: The mod files, accounts etc. are not for sale but “will only be given to the rightful person to carry on Foxhounds work”. One doesn’t have to be a prophet to predict that this person will be the one who purchases the domain/name rights, won’t he/she? In this case, Foxhound would be selling the mod files.

[darkxess 60]

Just now, fingolfin said:

 

And exactly this makes the whole scheme seem fishy: The mod files, accounts etc. are not for sale but “will only be given to the rightful person to carry on Foxhounds work”. One doesn’t have to be a prophet to predict that this person will be the one who purchases the domain/name rights, won’t he/she? In this case, Foxhound would be selling the mod files.

You knew exactly what I meant, he wanted someone to carry on his work, not just give to someone without the dedication to carry it on and give up after a few months or see how such of a task/cost it was then passing it once more to another person.

[SzepyCZ 24]

Just now, darkxess said:

THIS PEOPLE ^^ is exactly why you did not get your files! Thank people like @SzepyCZ 

oh, so now it is "our files", can the files be considered as hostages now then?

[WGP 91]

8 minutes ago, Dedmen said:

Its not a secure network, its a publicly visible website.

We website doesn't need to be on a specific domain to be a website. A publicly visible website on a IP Address (that was publicly known in the past via the domain) is not a "secured private network".

It is a criminal offence to hack either private or public websites here in the UK, as it is in the US and probably most countries. Provided an IP can be located and back tracked to whoever did it, then action could be taken.

Here in the UK maximun 2year jail sentence & fine/compensation if found guilty. Not sure about anywhere else.

 

I just googled out of curiosity, quite surprising governments are clamping down big style, well google own the world don't they..

[fingolfin 1972]

 

8 minutes ago, darkxess said:

You knew exactly what I meant, he wanted someone to carry on his work, not just give to someone without the dedication to carry it on and give up after a few months or see how such of a task/cost it was then passing it once more to another person.

 

No, I did not. And from my point of view, shutting down the site without notice and taking offers for the “framework” send a completely different message than "looking for someone to continue the legacy".

 

But anyhow, since the files are gone there is no use debating this any further... Kind of sad, that this turn of events will leave everyone disappointed.

[general_motors 21]

Community:

- mobilized to save the data;

- reached out to the owner of the database via email provided by him;

- was worried and inquired if the owner was OK;

- was even ready to offer some money and set up a crowdfunding page (there even are some donations made as of now) ;

- expressed readiness to resolve the situation and take over the database.

 

And the response is:

2 hours ago, darkxess said:

 see no point in helping a very selfish and ungrateful community

 

I don’t know, I think you don’t have to have 200 IQ to understand who is wrong here.

 

As for accusing someone of an ACTUAL crime and hacking, this is so ridiculous it’s even hard to describe, I mean, is it such a sloppy attempt to shift blame, or do you really believe what you’re saying? I assume you’re probably not a tech guy if you characterize this as hacking, which is a term with concrete technical definition. Moreover, as far as I remember, only two people were scraping for data until the owner himself closed the site. And jerryhopper told about this ““LOOPHOLE”” publicly AFTER it was closed. At that point it was already impossible to continue downloads, but you claim as if the hordes of evil hackers were continuing doing this. I might be wrong, but as of now your arguments make zero sense. As is this whole weird situation.

 

The fact that he was working for this site for 15 years or 150 years doesn’t give him carte blanche to do weird stuff in the end. At the end of the day he’s benefited from the community as much as the community benefited from him. He was sitting on one of the ArmA’s most important databases in the world of mods apart from Steam Workshop, so, the fact that community decided not to engage in fake politeness and “Thank you” poems, moving instead to concrete solutions was predicated by the seriousness of the situation, not by bad attitude or personal hatred. I thought this was obvious. If the Valve had decided to purge Steam Workshop without any notice they would’ve get a lot of heat too.

 

And also:

 

2 hours ago, darkxess said:

you are all closed out, the files are 100% gone, I deleted them!

 

So does this mean you are the owner of the database? Keeping the files and deleting them, then telling this to everyone is the very definition of progress.