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

All three websites continued to grow in 2006, especially in the first half of the year. The graph below shows that they all entered the Alexa top 500 this spring, which means that they are among the 500 most visited websites on the Internet.

Over the past 6 months the traffic ranks began to stabilize. Here’s a graph of the traffic rank of October, November and December. As you can see, the traffic is quite stable in this period, apart from the returning spikes in the weekends.

Other BitTorrent sites that made it to the 1000 most popular sites on the Web in 2006 are:

329. Isohunt.com
454. Demonoid
642. Torrentz.com
962. Puretna.com (adult content)

The award for the most effective advertising campaign goes to BTjunkie. Overnight they jumped from a traffic rank of 20,000 to a spot among the 2,000 most visited sites, and they managed to keep the people in.

We reported before that BitTorrent sites are slowly taking over the Internet. And it is not only the larger search engines and trackers that continue to grow. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of torrent sites in Alexa’s top 1000 doubles in 2007. Let’s see what the new year brings.

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is quite dubious. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.

Source: Torrentspy Most Popular BitTorrent Site of 2006