[loramin]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's because of the robots.txt on ezboard: it tells crawlers to stay out, and the Wayback Machine abides by that.

I actually emailed the Internet Archive people about it (I was focused on EQTraders.com, but same issue), and I essentially asked "what could I do to lift the restriction" ... and never heard back (or actually, I think they responded, but then didn't respond to my reply ... it was awhile ago so I forget).

I wish you all the luck in succeeding where I failed though!

Actually, I just looked up the email, and ... I lied! The default explanation is robots.txt, but no less than the director himself explained that in fact:

For “ezboard.com” I see:

>Sorry.
>This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.

That is not based on robots.txt but rather a specific request from the site owner.

Mark Graham
Director, The Wayback Machine

I replied back with:

Thank you so much for the quick reply!

If I could trouble you for just a couple more minutes of your time ...

1) If I could convince the rights holder to release the content, is it recoverable, or has it been deleted already?

2) Are you able to share any contact information at all about the rights holder, so that I can try to contact him or her?

And finally, this is purely an academic question, but if the rights holder dies in a situation like this, is the information truly lost forever, or would you accept authorization from a next of kin?

Thanks again for taking the time to help.

He responded:

I will look into this.

- Mark

... but that was a lie, and he never got back to me [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] This was all back in September of 2018.