IRCspy.com launched in February 2003.

The IRCspy forums (forums.ircspy.com) launched around November 2003, but it's not clear based on Wayback Machine snapshots.

It was this forum that I spent a lot of time in as a kid, passionately debating with folks in the "serious debate" general chat.

When IRCspy.com got shut down in November 2005, I was devestated that I would be losing access to my online community.

The IRCspy forums eventually rebranded as the TorrentSpy Forums and stayed online until at least June 2007.

For years I tracked the WHOIS data of IRCspy.com to see if the new owner would either not renew the domain, or auction it off. It finally went to auction in November 2018; I was determined to win, to keep this small piece of internet history from being abused further.

I haven't decided if I am going to create a simple HTML/CSS memorial, or, use the domain for something else. I've been thinking about making it a Mastodon server. I wish I had friends from the original forum to reach an agreement on how to use it.

More to come!