Fur Affinity access disrupted amid owner dispute

Popular furry art community Fur Affinity was temporarily inaccessible early this morning due to a dispute over the ownership of the site.
^[1]

The controversy began after Alkora Husky (previously known as Jheryn Lightfoot), founder of Fur Affinity and owner of the domain name furaffinity.net, was removed from adminship in response to a dispute over financial issues.

Both Alkora and Preyfar (also known as The Dragoneer) have reportedly said that Alkora offered to sell Preyfar the site.

Alkora reportedly wanted money to move out of his existing accommodation due to "black mould" (probably Stachybotrys chartarum) and to start a business to pay for college.^[2] Preyfar was reported as saying that this offer was in the region of $8,000. Alkora reportedly said that if this offer was not taken he would be looking for other offers in the same region - however, he also supposedly asserted that he "never said I would just sell it off to anyone".

Aerak J Wolfwood - a former site administrator and Alkora's current real-life host due to the aforementioned housing issues - stated Alkora had been "considering selling it for quite some time". He said that in response to Alkora's offer, Preyfar set an ultimatum of 30 minutes for Alkora to sell the site to him on his terms, otherwise "FA would cease to be".^[3] Preyfar previously stated that site expenditures are $800/month and are likely to be $1000/month by the end of the year,^[4] and reportedly said that over $15,000 had been donated to support Fur Affinity since June 2006.^[1]

At around 2:40 EST, the domain name furaffinity.net was redirected to a page on Alkora's website, with a message from Alkora stating that "the staff of Fur Affinity have illegally taken control of a website I own".^[5] The Fur Affinity servers themselves were under Preyfar's control, but the site became inaccessible through its domain name. The site forums remained up, and administrators used them to advise users on how to reach the servers and to report their views.

Access via furaffinity.net was restored in under an hour.

All access to Fur Affinity, including by IP address, was disrupted at approximately 10pm EDT on July 27 due to a server relocation.^[6] While the DNS record updates, the server is available at furaffinity.info.

Quotes

The blame all lies in me, because I refuse to pay thousands of dollars for what I have been primarily supporting financially by myself since December 2005. Alkora has barely spent a single penny on things, and I have the bills to prove it. -- Preyfar[1]

I was just presenting the idea of an offer to him. I don't get why he got so angry. -- Alkora[2]

I perfectly understand Preyfar's reaction ... although Alkora's investment in FA started off big, Preyfar has fronted more and more money into keeping this place alive and having the owner show any sign of instability isn't a good thing. -- Aerak[3]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Why FA was down, but is up again now - Dave Hyena et. al., Fur Affinity forums (July 25, 2007)
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} FA drama AIM logged - conversation between Alkora and PaveSama/P4ve (July 25, 2007)
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} FA Crisis over.... hopefully (July 25, 2007)
4. ↑ Re: Um WTF!? - reply by The Dragoneer (July 25, 2007)
5. ↑ So, its that time again... - Kyle "Kay" Fox, Fur Affinity LiveJournal community (July 25, 2007)
6. ↑ FURAFFINITY DOWN WHILE SERVERS MOVE - Pinkuh (July 27, 2007)