T E X T F I L E S
During the night of January 7th, the machine that hosts textfiles.com was hacked, and the main page of the machine (not textfiles.com) was replaced with a "defacement page" by a group called "Hoepelkoe Inc."

As the page indicates that I should stop linking to, in their words, "anarchy shit", I assume this is fall-out from this letter I was sent on Sunday. In a nutshell: I was told that my anarchy section is no longer allowed on the Internet because it can be used by "lamers", and I was told I had 20 days to remove it. Apparently they decided 20 days wasn't sufficient.

TEXTFILES.COM is now down until a number of nips and tucks are done to the security and setup of the machine and the site itself. Like installing new storm doors after someone has smashed through them or having to store a pumpkin inside a window because people are throwing them from your porch, this process is annoying, a sort of surrender, and a sign of how a small group can ruin it for others.

I've said this enough times that it sounds like a mindless mantra, but I make no money whatsoever from textfiles.com; in fact, it costs me hundreds of dollars every month to run it. Why do I do it? Because I care about history, because I care that people who are relatively new to the online experience see how things were, in historical context. For better or worse, all these sections online, including the "Anarchy" section, are part of history. To hide away that part of the past betrays a lie to the future. Sorry, I believe that. I'm sorry a small group of folks believe in censorship enough to try and take me down. And until I'm confident that I can put the site back up without hurting the many other folks who use the same machine and who have put their trust in me, it has to stay down.

Doing a google search for "Hoepelkoe Inc." leads you to their webpage, and their handiwork around the net. Feel free to let them know your thoughts on their work.

Love,
Jason Scott