1. What happened? TL;DR: We have legal problems, courtesy of one of the “copyright protection” groups. That’s what you get when you have organizations whose sole purpose is scoring points by taking down sites. They don’t care about what they take down. They just do what they are paid for.
2. Is this the same thing as with BG? BG’s shutdown was pre-emptive. This one wasn’t planned at all.
3. Does this mean UG is gone? Unfortunately, yes. As of now, consider it gone forever.
4. Is there any way to get in touch with the rest of the community? irc://irc.esper.net/#UG .
6. Is the user data safe? We went scorched earth on the server – everything that COULD be wiped, was. Everything that could NOT be wiped was thoroughly encrypted and is useless without the encryption keys.