drama...
I know only tidbits since I didnt really want to get involved (not my money/life/business), but in Chris' defense, the site was not bought or sold to make money from what I gather. Chris turned this guy down in the past when he came to him, and the "og" who was interested in buying the site kept dragging his heels/complicating things.
I wont say any numbers since i am not positive about anything, but the $$ amounts you guys are throwing around are certainly waaaaaaaay higher than what hmt was sold for. I'm pretty sure that when it was going to be sold to the other person chris was even going to lose money but i forget.
Anyway, from what chris told me it seemed that rick told him the only big change was that he was switching to vbulletin. Id wager that if chris knew this guy was going to be banning everyone, etc, etc then he wouldn't have even considered it. I knew this would go all wrong, hell I almost bought homemadeturbo.net a few days ago but I wouldnt know what to do with it anyway lol.
Jeff...I could tell over the phone that you were upset and probably thought I shouldve done something. I feel for you man, but it wasnt my place and to be honest I thought this guy was just going to toss up some ads or something, not start censoring and banning people. He (rick) even brought up not charging the sponsors for a while so then I thought he would be cool and just was some guy who liked owning sites or something. I guess I was being naive.
I hope the hmt community survives wherever it is, i just wonder what the legal ramifications are when you "copy" a site. Bringing backups of hmt over here might be the wrong way to go, but I'm no lawyer.