I’ve lately been rereading the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft, almost all of which are/were available on a website I discovered recently, www.dagonbytes.com. But ever since last Thursday or Friday, every time I try to access it I get, “You are not authorized to view this page.” What happened? Did the site master run into some copyright troubles with the Lovecraft estate?
I doubt that was the problem since most of Lovecraft’s work is no longer covered by copyright. My online Lovecraft library of choice vanished for reasons unknown. I found another one.
By the way, considering the amount of Cthulhu and Dagon worshippers in Florida (many disguised as Santeria or Voudoun practicioners) you’ll feel safer not knowing what’s going on around you. I have seen the dancers of Boca Del Mar. I have heard the hyms to El Rey Sueno (there should be a tilde over the n). I wish I had not.
On looking through my bookmarks, it turns out I was also using dagonbytes as my Lovecraft library. I now have the same problem. Bah.
Arkham Press is notorious for threatening sites with copyright infringement lawsuits, and hasprobably moved onto to filing DMCA reports with webhosts to get sites shut down.
Doesn’t matter what the law says if someone forcefully tries to argue for a copyright they don’t really have and can scare people off.
Years back I offered to take over a site for someone who had hosted the HPL stories so that all false lawsuits could be aimed at me and I could laugh at them, but he nevre followed through and that site just died.
But of course there are also plnty of other reasons why a site might stop working also.
Hm! Just checked the site again and I’m still getting “YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO VIEW THIS PAGE.”
Not the message you would get if the site had simply been taken down – that would be “CANNOT FIND SERVER” or “PAGE CANNOT BE DISPLAYED.”
What’s going on here? Have any of you seen/heard any cyberscuttle?
It’s an HTTP 403 response, which means authentication is required to access the requested resource on the web server, and you are not authenticated. In plain English, that means that you need a password to access the website, and you haven’t provided one.
This is a purely technical answer, I have no information for you about why this would have happened, if you didn’t need a password before.
No, never needed one before. But in my experience, when access to a website requires a password, it asks you for one; and, if you don’t, directs you to a page where you can sign up for one (which might or might not cost money, depending). As things stand, there’s no way for me to enter a dagonbytes.com password even if I had one.
Oops, I’m an idiot. I got a 403 mixed up with a 401. A 401 would mean “Unauthorized”, and the client browser should prompt you for your password and then send that to the server. A 403, which is what this site is sending, simply means you have been denied access. It’s what you’d get if you put in the wrong password in response to a 401, or if the web server administrator has put something like “deny all” in the configuration. Basically, it appears that the server is up and running fine, but the administrator is not allowing access to the site.
So, pretty much exactly what you said a few posts ago. :smack: Carry on…
This has happened to Dagonbytes from time to time in the past, but usually for a few days, never this long. Fortunately, I know a little :: looks in mirror :: redhead who was given a few collections of Lovecraft for Christmas. (The clerk was really snotty about the purchase, can you believe?) Hopefully Dagonbytes will be back eventually, it’s a great site. For some reason I prefer reading there as opposed to The Literature Network (which unfortunately doesn’t have any Lovecraft). I was finally able to finish The Picture of Dorian Gray, after numerous attempts, thanks to the good people (and love from Cthulhu) at Dagonbytes.
Perhaps the stars aren’t right…
Probably because on dagonbyte, you get to read white text on a black screen – just teh way horror should be read! 
Perhaps the mad admin Abdul Alhazred took the page down out of fear of squamous, noisesome gibbering in the night.
Maybe HE’s awake already…
You could try emailing the site owner to ask…
Don’t know where to find the address . . . except on the site . . .
I googled for dagonbytes, and found someone asking the same questions. One of the responses led me to here. Judging from the URL it’s an archive of dagonbytes, complete with black background and white letters like another poster mentioned.
As to the particular website that’s mentioned, that’s probably being covered, but what caught my eye in the title was “(Horror stories online)”.
If you want to expand beyond Lovecraft, might I mention www.horrormasters.com
They don’t appear to have Lovecraft, but they have all sorts of other people, if you’re into the genre in general.
Der Trihs! 
May you Be Eaten First!
You can e-mail them here.
And a Merry Cthulhumas to you too !