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Reply To: 1/16th radio-controlled scale model of Komatsu D575A-2

The content creator (We) deleted the links on HEF and the 16 vids on YouTube of all the field tests intentionally. Bots (or humans) in Kazakhstan had scraped this site and reset links from those video links to links at their end leading to their own websites and to places other than the YouTube field test videos, the most likely purpose being to propagate spam or launch botnet denial-of-service attacks. A website's robot.txt most likely instructed their botnet search engines what to look for and came across them on HEF, probably just by sheer luck/accident but it found them all the same. Of course I am more than aware that any online content is considered public property these days- this is the world- wide- web, the internet. When I discovered this I reported it to Steve twice and asked for the four build threads to be removed in entirety to prevent the above mentioned issue from further propagation around the internet and so that it eventually stalled-out at the Kazakhstan botnet end. I did not receive a reply and that removal request did not happen. We can only ask for the content to be removed, we can’t force the issue. Of course we elected to create the build threads and link the field tests video links from HEF to YouTube and we also accept that HEF content once posted is no longer within our control, essentially, no longer our property, unlike YouTube where the content can be deleted by the owner. We reported it to YouTube and they essentially suggested we whistle Dixie. So we had no choice but to remove all the original content from YouTube to stall-out the botnets. The remaining thread content is still present since it was not removed in entirety and hence the links no longer link to the former content on YouTube. We did it to ourselves - we put the threads and links up in the first instance and voluntarily, so we have no right for complaint. HEF have no control over these internet botnets either,it’s annoying but thankfully at least for us, we could remove the linked content from YouTube. That’s all there is to it.