Derpy was a great champion of friendship and a symbol of cooperation between a fanbase and a production unit that was uniquely symbiotic throughout ALL broadcast media in this era of SOPA's gestapo-style copyright enforcement tactics. With her gone, there is no longer any special relationship between the fans and the production unit, IMO. It is a sad, extreme decision and one that could have been resolved in hundreds of other ways that didn't cause so much difficulty and sadness.