responsibly managing the community, and the costs involved with protecting the community from the attacks.
Here's the problem with that idea, Lowendbox had revenue and ads since 2009. So Joel would have been handed that account and income. He wasn't penniless when the March 2012 DDoS happened.
Like now, there were tons of able bodied folks in the community who would have given services, network protection, etc. until the sites could have paid for such. But again, LEB was bringing in money -- how much? I am totally unsure.
Doesn't it seem awfully suspect that the site ends up in Joel's hands and in under a month, it gets DDoS'd then goes over to Colocrossing? It's very problematic, because CC doesn't have any DDoS protection ability at last check, here more than a year later. Anyone could have hosted the site and put Cloudflare up front. That's nothing hard, exotic or per se expensive.
Joel was either a pawn from day one or Colocrossing attacked Lowend sites to get their fangs into the site and take it over.
Personally I hope Joel's parachute 'malfunctions' for a few seconds next kite go round. The boy needs a serious bit of mental reorganization and a lesson in both honesty and humility.