It was a significant event – PureTNA had in excess of 1,329,500 members, a tally equaled by Empornium. The reasons for their shutdown remain unconfirmed.

While their members were understandably disappointed, they knew that with a flick of the wrist they would soon be enjoying themselves again on an alternative site. One of the top choices at the time – Cheggit.net.

Cheggit was created back in 2006 by ex-staff and users from Empornium who were disappointed with a controversial takeover by advertising outfit TargetPoint. Cheggit lived on until just a few days ago, when it disappeared. Now it’s back, but the news isn’t good – the end is here for Cheggit.

“Back in December ’11, when I embarked on a ‘bold new vision’ for the site, I thought we could change the site and make everything just work,” says Cheggit’s admin. “But as time went on, it just wasn’t feasible to do that and be in compliance.”

The site’s operator says that taking the decision to close the site wasn’t easy and took several weeks. But unlike some sites that simply close up, say nothing, and leave their communities high and dry, Cheggit’s admin told site members that the tracker is bowing out with an orderly exit for their benefit.

“I wanted to give the community a chance to exchange info and keep hooked up if you wanted to. That’s right….regardless of what you might think, this was done for the community.”

“Best decision? Who knows. But I do know that it isn’t the worst thing that could have happened. I’ve been at this far longer than I care to admit, and it would have sucked to just lop it off,” he notes adding, “As much as this may suck, it doesn’t suck near as much as just going away.”

Cheggit’s admin also assures its users that the shutdown has nothing to do with the FBI, MPAA or ICE, and isn’t a veiled attempt at “a ponzi scheme to relaunch Megaupload.”

It’s been a hard 12 months for adult torrent sites. In April 2011, Pornolab, the world’s largest porn tracker, had its servers seized by Ukranian authorities, but eventually made a comeback.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Rumors continued to persist in connection with their sudden vows of chastity, with the AVN porn industry website reporting that the owners of both Empornium and PureTNA had been seen the week before at one of their trade shows in Las Vegas.

Regardless of the specific ins-and-outs, the effect of site refugees fleeing to other trackers was immediate. The pressure was perhaps felt most deeply at rival porn tracker Cheggit.

“After this latest fiasco, any stat you can think of (web, torrent or tracker) at least doubled over the span of about 4 days,” Cheggit admin Chip told TorrentFreak.

“After some help from our host and some reconfiguring, we’ve got things in order with our servers running the site pretty smoothly. There is still the odd error that will cause a slow down, but that’s to be expected considering the unplanned and hurried fashion in which the server reconfig came about.”

As Cheggit’s ranks become increasingly swollen with new and eager members, the mass debate now centers on where else porn aficionados can spend some me-time.

With the help of ex-PureTNA and Empornium users we’ve compiled a list of alternatives / replacements which can be found below. Both public and private sites are included, but only those that are currently accepting new sign ups. Those that aren’t immediately welcoming to complete strangers are excluded.

* If you’re looking to download torrents anonymously and avoid the prying eyes of third parties we strongly recommend BTGuard.

Then the rest of our stimulus package, in no particular order….

Links removed upon Google’s request.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Cheggit went public nearly a day ago but the torrent site already has 20806 registered users, a great success for a site that’s just starting.

Cheggit implements some neat features like a wiki and a tag based search engine.

Cheggit out

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.