"Free exchange among peoples is alive and well. It is easier today to make a website and share anything than it has ever been in the history of civilization."

This has always been my own reaction to pronouncements that the Internet as we knew it is dead, or over.

I'm usually quite optimistic about our ability to freely (and usually without monetary cost) create and share, globally.

However, the closure of Nekochan (an old fashioned web forum dedicated to SGI hardware and the IRIX OS) has changed my mind a little bit. The owner of that site became convinced that it was literally impossible to run a forum website and maintain GDPR compliance. He believed that it introduced infinite liability and would require constant purging of data based on requests that could come at any time into the infinite future.

I'm paraphrasing, of course, and I was not actively using the site when it shut down, but it was one of my favorite spots online and a source of priceless information and richness.

And now it's gone ...