"When I went back a few days later to download the freebies the site was totally gone! " 

I think that became a circular problem, at least some years ago. People would download everything for fear that the site would close down. The resulting rush would bust the site owner's bandwidth limit and they'd get hit with a bigger bill. They'd ask people to only download a couple of items a day etc., but in the end, some of them just said to heck with it and shut down. I think that's what doomed Lannie's and some other classics.

That was before places like sharecg and the file hosting services, and maybe bandwidth allotments are more generous these days, so I don't know if that is as much of a problem today or not.

On the bright side, ghastley  209.92.41.204/Poser/  is still online and greylight www.greylight.com/poser.html still has Poser 3 vintage freebies.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken