I have been in the Furry/Scalie community since the days when Herpy.net was still an active site. Recently, I attempted to view old images on the Wayback Machine, as I knew many were stored there, having seen them before. Curiously, the Archive returned an error: "That URL has been excluded from the WM," which prompted me to investigate. I went to search for Herpy.net, expecting to be met with the owner's note of apology regarding the site's closing due to abuse, which was the only accessible page for years, yet I was immediately redirected to e621. Do not get me wrong, I prefer e621, but it is not the humble site that introduced me to the fandom. I am not asking for tech help with the Archive, yet I am wondering why I am redirected here, and to a lesser extent, why cached pages seemingly vanished.

I might have missed some news article or something, sorry if that is the case.
Thanks for your time. It is just sad to see art go.

By the way, I am aware of the existence of Herpy.nu, and that much of the art formerly on the original Herpy.net can be found on e621 and FurAffinity, yet I do not believe that all of it could be feasibly relocated.

See for yourself: https://herpy.net

Herpy was/is owned by Varka, but he had shut it down. So since he also owns e621, he probably just did a redirect to e621.

I can't remember what information I have gotten and from where, so do correct me if I'm shouting internet rumors or alternatively stuff that shouldn't be public...

As for the exclusion from archival sites like wayback machine, there might be a good reason why the site was so suddenly shut down and nuked, rather than the servers being transferred to someone else or given time to be crawled. Material that were hosted in there might not have been something that the owner were aware of or desired to host and as such, the approach is destroy with least amount of traces.

As owner of herpys domain is the same as owner of e621 domain and the content that was desireable is also most likely on e621, makes sense to have redirect.

I mostly remember bumping into herpy before it was destroyed for some scalie related animations and stereograms, just have no recollection if there was material which wasn't mirrored here yet.

Varka usually has a very hands-off approach to the pages he hosts, but expects the admins who actually lead those pages to ensure they comply with all applicable laws. Herpy.net hosted a bunch of content that was a big, legal issue in Arizona, and thus was shut down like the liability it was.

Thank you all for your input. I never thought about it from a legal angle...

I guess I should have been more astute. There is plenty of art on the net, anyway. Thanks again, for your time. It was just strange to see the seeming loss of trace of an entire site. I guess that solves that.

NotMeNotYou said:
Varka usually has a very hands-off approach to the pages he hosts, but expects the admins who actually lead those pages to ensure they comply with all applicable laws. Herpy.net hosted a bunch of content that was a big, legal issue in Arizona, and thus was shut down like the liability it was.

Thanks for telling me the rest of the story. For all these years, I guess I only really knew a minute portion of it. The site's content, itself had a part in the termination and distancing.

Mairo said:
I can't remember what information I have gotten and from where, so do correct me if I'm shouting internet rumors or alternatively stuff that shouldn't be public...

As for the exclusion from archival sites like wayback machine, there might be a good reason why the site was so suddenly shut down and nuked, rather than the servers being transferred to someone else or given time to be crawled. Material that were hosted in there might not have been something that the owner were aware of or desired to host and as such, the approach is destroy with least amount of traces.

As owner of herpys domain is the same as owner of e621 domain and the content that was desireable is also most likely on e621, makes sense to have redirect.

I mostly remember bumping into herpy before it was destroyed for some scalie related animations and stereograms, just have no recollection if there was material which wasn't mirrored here yet.

I suppose I can see why someone would not want to host content from a place such as Herpy.net. I guess I never took the will of the Archive's upholders to cut ties with potentially-dangerous material into account. Thank you for your time.

Chaser said:
Herpy was/is owned by Varka, but he had shut it down. So since he also owns e621, he probably just did a redirect to e621.

I see how it would be simple to redirect, with him owning both sites. It was just strange to see the incidence with the redirection and deletion of cached pages occur in seemingly-related succession. Now, I realize that it was almost certain that they happened independent of one another.
Thank you.