If Eric wanted to step away from the forum surely he would have decided either to simply pull the plug and let it die, or a more savvy person would say why don't I try and sell it if possible.

You then advertise the fact that you wish to sell the forum, perhaps even approach the GNR camp to guage any interest in buying it.

I don't understand it, is he trying to suggest that he only now has contemplated selling it?  That would be the first thing I would think of doing if I was him, seeing if it was saleable.  He has presumably sunk in a lot more $$'s than he has got out of it so why wouldn't you look at that option first?

But the way he has gone about it it seems like an afterthought and he has already devalued the site by announcing its closure and so members started signing up elsewhere etc.

As for someone contemplating buying it and then relying on donations to make it viable, good luck with that one!

My take on the whole thing is that Eric in the last year or two really started to bend at the knee for the gnr camp. Yeah he and his crew got some back stage passes and some direct contact with Axl and co.  But the gnr camp were only using them for their own short term needs. Whether it was to censor stuff or a feeble attempt to control some of the online views of the band and another attempt to turn the site into a propaganda tool for the band like htgth.

It seems like Eric put all his chips into being the good gnr lap dog yet ultimately felt he was being played.  Running a site can't be cheap and to tow the company line one week and get lawyer letters the next about mls or Ron or whatever the fuck it was the next week must have worn pretty thin.

As James said it's no surprise they kicked Eric and mygnr to the curb in a heartbeat when it suited them.  I mean please Axl ringing eric a year or two ago to personally wish him a merry Christmas etc - pass me a bag I wanna vomit. Axl doesn't do that for some I online nerd coz he's a nice guy, they were playing them.

Gnr camp has no obligation to pay for that site tho and if Eric thought his ass licking would make them then more fool him! Some comments in his post sound strange like his annoyance at no us tour. Maybe he was counting on that to drive some traffic to the site and create some more ad revenue? Dunno it just sounded like an unfulfilled expectation of his pissed him off.

Yeah with ours at $5.30-$5.60 a gallon it's a fucken joke. Like you Olorin the government here puts so much fucken excise on the fuel it's pathetic. Everytime the price goes up there take goes up too since it's percentage based. They also have a couple of different grabs at it too so they tax their own fuel excise as well.

What's worse too is the oil companies clearly engage in price fixing and collusion and the govt are too fucken weak to do anything about it.

When the Aussie dollar was weak prices went up but when the Aussie dollar stormed back against the the usd prices didn't fully reflect it. We just get gouged by the oil companies and the govt at every opportunity.

Yeah that's a big issue using your download quota up. Maybe the isp's will do some sort of deals. Like with my apple tv if I download and watch movies thru it, it doesn't count towards my download quota it's in the "free zone" since they have done a deal with apple and other companies.