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: NSFW: Top PureTNA and Empornium Alternatives

For the last few days the huge BitTorrent porn trackers Empornium and PureTNA have been dark, with both sites routing to 127.0.0.1. Understandably, users of the sites have been pretty concerned since these pair of giants, which are connected by the same management, have massive memberships and are long-standing mainstays of the community.

To give an idea of size, PureTNA had in excess of 1,329,500 members, Empornium a similar number. At last count PureTNA’s database sat at nearly 67,000 torrents servicing around 630,000 peers. Empornium listed more than 82,000 torrents and 660,000 peers. That’s a hell of a lot of filth and depravity, just how their members liked it.

But for their users, speaking of the sites in the permanent past tense is the sad reality today. The management of both Empornium and PureTNA have confirmed to TorrentFreak that they are “offline permanently”. Requests for elaboration were declined, but a comment obtained from Breeze, the manager of both sites, said simply: “Such is bittorrent life.”

So considering that both sites had continued to grow, both in terms of torrents and membership, why suddenly close down?

The main unconfirmed rumor to have gained traction is that due to a lack of investment in code development, both sites have been vulnerable to malicious attacks. This resulted in one or both of the sites being hacked in recent days. Rather than pump money into the sites to prevent this happening again, their hard drives were wiped by the sites’ owners to protect user privacy, or so the story goes.

The other rumor, which is circulating on the fringes of the adult entertainment industry, is that the sites buckled under legal pressure, or at least the threat of it. As can be seen from a list retrievable via Google cache which was updated only last week, dozens of porn sites and studios have issued some kind of legal “do not upload” orders to the sites.

While there may be some triumphant gloating from elements of the porn industry, these lists could merely be an indication that both sites were trying to stay within the law by abiding by the desires of copyright holders who preferred for their material not to be shared on the sites. In any event, with the demise of both sites, that point is moot.

Interestingly, although PureTNA is still listed by Google, a similar search for Empornium draws a a complete blank. As far as the world’s leading search engine is concerned, Empornium doesn’t exist. In the future, those looking for nostalgia will have to settle for the Empornium song from Futuristic Sex Robotz which lives on with YouTube.

Whatever the reason – hackings, legal pressure, a combination of the two or just plain old lack of interest in continuing – the sites are not coming back so for BitTorrent porn consumers this certainly marks the end of an era.

Whether Cheggit can cope with the Empornium/PureTNA refugees will remain to be seen. Their servers, in common with the actors in the videos they index, are likely to be puffing and panting for some time.

Source: Empornium and PureTNA Permanently Shut Down

Two of the largest adult BitTorrent communities are Empornium and PureTNA. Both sites have well over half a million members, and these giants are a thorn in the side of the adult entertainment industry. Copyright issues don’t seem to be the largest threat for these sites though – adult YouTube-type spinoffs are – and they are taking over quickly.

Streaming adult content appears to be much more appealing to the Internet user out for a quick fix. They are easily accessible and offer instant gratification, with many not even requiring the user to sign up. While some would argue that the wait for a complete download is half the fun, the majority of the porn surfers are not interested in such foreplay.

The popularity of these streaming sites didn’t go unnoticed at the adult BitTorrent communities either. Both Empornium and PureTNA have launched their very own ‘tube’ alternatives, realizing that’s what the public seems to want nowadays. Not without success too, as the streaming sites they launched are outgrowing the BitTorrent sites in number of visitors.

PureTNA is currently hiring for their streaming site, and they have some interesting job offers. They are looking for a part-time porn expert with “encyclopedic knowledge of Porn Stars, Labels, Studios and the Adult Industry”, among other things, hoping to expand the site even further.

It is interesting to see how quickly these torrent sites have adapted to the demands of the market. Hollywood could learn a thing or two from them, as instead of aggressively promoting their old technology, they simply acted in response to the public’s demands.

Source: Adult Torrent Sites Lose Ground to PornTubes

Today, users searching Google for Empornium.us are met with a warning under the URL: “This site may harm your computer”. After ignoring the warning and clicking the link using Internet Explorer, the Empornium main page starts loading, but is then punctuated with virus/malware/exploit warnings from an up-to-date anti-virus scanner. Google reports “Malicious software includes 4 trojans, 3 exploits. Successful infection resulted in an average of 11 new processes on the target machine.”

During our tests we caught malware or exploits which seemed to originate from:

hxxp://hardmoviesporno.com/test/exp/update1.pdf
hxxp://ffseik.com/25/2/getfile.php?f=vispdf

At this point we deemed the Google Safe Browsing report to be correct and abandoned our own tests. Accessing the Empornium homepage using Firefox3 caused an immediate halt:

Google notes that the ‘malicious software’ is actually hosted on 4 domains, including gianttopnano.cn, mmcounter.com, filmmultimediaonline.cn. Furthermore it states that two domains appear to be “functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site” including vxhost.cn, and filmmultimediaonline.cn.

TorrentFreak has contacted Empornium management for a comment, but so far there has been no response.

Update: Empornium Team contacted us, confirming that the malicious code has nothing to do with them and they are “taking action to shut down the infiltration & remove the code asap”. Their own tests so far show it is “exploiting a known & patched security hole in Acrobat”.

Source: Google Blocks World’s Largest Porn Torrent Tracker

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: Cheggit is Live

Most site owners were offered a fixed sum of money and a percentage of the future ad revenue on top of that. Similar to the proposition the made to Meganova.

Moreover, this recent confession makes me wonder what’s really going on at Empornium. Let’s ask a former Empornium admin…

TorrentFreak: Is there, to your knowledge some kind of ownership agreement between Targetpoint and Emporniums former owner Sazaraki?

Emp admin: To the best of my knowledge, yes.

TorrentFreak: What is the nature of this contract?

Emp admin: The rough outline was, the contract would call for a couple of lump sum cash payments by Targetpoint, with the last bit paid upon transfer of the domain name. Sazaraki was to remain on for some time as head admin to smooth the transition. He intended to use the cash payment to pay for professional development of new site code. At the time these negotiations were taking place, Jan-Feb 05, the site was dying under the strain of the large number of users — load times were slow, timeouts were common, and staff were spending many hours every day simply manually correcting user’s stats because the tracker was timing out on them. The contract called for Saz to continue to receive a share of the ad revenue for the next year, for a token monthly payment to hand out to staff, and for Targetpoint to pay the salary for a professional backend sysop of Saz’s choosing. It also called for Sazaraki and the original admin team to retain access to the boxes and 100%
editorial control during this 1 year period.

After an initial payment was made and the domain was transferred, Targetpoint proposed changing the deal. The deal essentially remained the same, but Targetpoint was to become an investor, rather than buy the site outright. The only significant changes were that they would not pay another cash payment, it was now a permanent partnership rather than an ownership transition, and Targetpoint agreed to pay for a professional site development house of saz’s choosing to improve Empornium, rather than have us build a new site.

TorrentFreak: How much money is involved, and who paid the money?

Emp admin: The money was payed by Or Kunztman, CEO of Targetpoint. As far as the amouunt of the monthly minimum that he was paid, I don’t feel it’s my place to say.

TorrentFreak: Who is in control of the site at this very moment?

Emp admin: I’m sure today it’s just as it was last week. Or Kuntzman and Targetpoint control the money, Oded makes the day to day decisions, Arjan (aka Noos) does the tech stuff.

This is supported by the list of admins on empornium.us

TorrentFreak: What made you decide to leave emporium?

Emp admin: The admins realized last year, shortly after the deal was made, that they were not living up to their end of the agreement. We were constantly having Arjan login to our boxes doing stuff without permission… like that whole “Piratebay Moderated Network” banner that caused such a controversy… Slipping in more and more obtrusive Targetpoint ads, which he wasn’t supposed to do without Saz’s approval.

TorrentFreak: Do you know why he put The Piratebay banner up?

Emp admin: No. At the time there was speculation that it was a “google bomb” … that they were trying to steal hits from TPB when people searched on google, they’d hit on Empornium and draw more eyeballs to Targetpoint’s ads… but that’s just speculation. I have no personal knowledge of their involvement with TPB

Emp admin (continues):

So they weren’t paying the monthly payments, weren’t hiring the professionals they had promised. we knew they were screwing us. So some of us started development work on Cheggit.net. We hung around because we were never in this for the money, we got into this for the community, and the money was intended to improve the site because it was dying under the load it had grown so big. If we had left at that time, we would’ve been box-banned and that would’ve been the end of that community. So we swallowed our pride and did Targetpoint’s gruntwork while simultaneously working on cheggit.net. We knew a day would come when we couldn’t stomach it anymore, we just didn’t know when, and we hoped we would have a new working site before that day came.

Then they’re new site rollout happened

We had a working beta site on Cheggit… not perfect yet, but the nuts and bolts were there, we knew we were close… just adding on the non-essentials … the “pretty stuff”. And there was Sazaraki’s reaction to the whole new “pay to signup” site rollout that the rest of us had to consider. Sazaraki got fed up, abandoned ownership of the IRC channel, logged out of Empornium and told us he was quitting. Despite Arjan’s claims, we did not do any attacking on Empornium, the rest of what happened was the user’s reaction. We have a loyal community. Targetpoint never understood that.

TorrentFreak: How many of the original staff members are still at emporium?

Emp admin: Save for Saz, who is bound by his contract, ALL of the original Empornium staff, mods and admins alike, were a part of the development and/or beta of the new site, and all of us have left.

TorrentFreak: Thanks.

The nature of the contract described by this former Empornium admin is similar to the one offered to Meganova. Although Targetpoint officially denies that they have an ownership agreement with empornium.

TorrentFreak contacted Targetpoint and they responded with the fillowing statement:

Its very simple. Targetpoint do not own in any way Empornium.us. We never owned it and we shall never will. Targetpoint only connection to Empornium was advertising business relations. No more.

Source: Empornium: Targetpoint Sold Us Out!