Targetpoint Takes Over Empornium
Written by Ernesto on July 09, 2006Interesting developments at one of the largest porn torrent sites on the net. Targetpoint, an Israeli advertising company took over Empornium, changed the design and locked out the former site admins.
Just a couple of days ago Empornium’s redesign was introduced and some site features (signup and search engine) have been made pay-only. Due to these changes some admins and contributors left empornium and moved to a new site called cheggit.net.
In the meanwhile there’s a battle on wikipedia on both the empornium and the targetpoint page.
Targetpoint is an active player in the BitTorrent community, it provides ads for mininova for example, and a targetpoint reseller has a 37% share in The Piratebay. This is fine because Targetpoint provides these sites with the means to grow.
But we know now that it’s not all good. As reported before, targepoint is actively buying several torrent sites, and taking more and more control.
The same happened with Empornium:
“Before TargetPoint, Empornium was run by Saz. Saz made a choice to take on investors. By taking a partial buy-in from Targetpoint, the goal was to use their resources to make the site better with better servers, a complete rebuild and a potentially wider audience. This contract gave TargetPoint a lot of legal control over Empornium, including control over the domain. The first thing they did was to put additional ads on the site, which was gernerally acceptable as they didn’t get in the way nor cause problem with using the site. Pushing the Big Cheese Out On Empornium, TargetPoint started making bigger decisions about the site, and started to lock down and control the site more, adding more advertisements and other such things. Saz hadn’t been the sole owner of the site since the initial deal, but only now did that become a problem. After the move to .nl, he no longer had any control over what TargetPoint did with the site.”
And now it seems that Targetpoint took complete control over Empornium, making more drastic changes and turning it into a paysite. That’s obviously a step too far.
Supporting BitTorrent sites is fine, buying them is OK with me but turning BitTorrent sites into paysites is wrong.
Previously: Ads Could Kill The Piratebay
Next: Targetpoint & BitTorrent: Who Owns What?
23 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
On the broad issue, I’m on the old ex-emp admins’ side. I agree with this blog post, that says making bittorrent sites pay sites is wrong.
But the ex-admins, and their followers on emp, have really crossed the line. They’ve been attacking the site, and trying to interfere with other people who want to use it.
This bugs me because they did sell it to targetpoint. And when you sell something, the other person owns it. You might not like what they do with it (and no one likes what targetpoint has done), but selling something to someone and then trying to destroy it is pretty shady.
The other problem isn’t moral, but it is practical. They don’t have a replacement site up, but they’re making emp useless. Basically, they’re saying to everyone, stop doing bittorrent stuff for a month while we build our new site.
That’s unreasonable. A lot of the ex-admins’ reactions looks like a temper tantrum. If you don’t like emp, build a new site, and take their users away by being better.
I agree if the ex-admins are attacking with no cause lol… Did they agree to sell the entire site with no control over what happens? (Or atleast state it cant become a pay-site etc?)
Its just a big shady mess lol
Good thing meganova.org didnt sell their site, targetpoint is crap!
[quote comment="7266"]Good thing meganova.org didnt sell their site, targetpoint is crap![/quote]
you should read this:
link
I already left Emp. when I noticed that all the great uploaders are no longer uploading there. about TargetPoint I don\’t know what they trying to do but if it was turning BT sites to pay sites they gonna fail big time.
Well Empornium was really a good site and actually hosted some qaulite porn torrents but this a really a sad development and i can only say FUCK TARGETPOINT.
if anyone can put me in touch with the admins of cheggit I would appreciate it. I went by valiant on empornium and have a 2.1+ share ratio. I didnt upload but I did seed — as long as there was someone interested I kept seeding. Anyway the reason I am interested in getting in touch with them I would like to offer to help out in the programming area. I am a professional C++ programmer and would like to see if I can help out.
Thanks
ooops. My email is valiant (at) innocent (dot) com
[quote comment="7256"]But the ex-admins, and their followers on emp, have really crossed the line. They’ve been attacking the site, and trying to interfere with other people who want to use it.[/quote]
Do you have any evidence to support your claim ex-admins were involved in what you call “attacking the site”?
I know first hand that’s not true.
[quote]Some users might notice their statistics, class or info have been changed. This is due to ex-moderators trying to ruin empornium. The problem is solved.[/quote]
The above can be read on Empornium, put there by the new TP staff. If that were true, it would be one hell of an accomplishment; gaining database access, without admin access and while being IP box-banned, don’t you think?
It’s just part of the new staff’s FUD.
Empornium’s new staff are:
odeddaniel
canono (aka noos/noosius. he changed his handle)
morgies
(from http://empornium.us/promoted.php )
after i found empornium i never looked around the internet for another porn resource, why would i? empornium had everything a pervert would ever need, and best of all it was free. even though i don’t have to pay a dime since i’ve been a member for a year or so, just knowing what they’ve done leaves a bitter taste in my mouth every time i go to the site.
i’m going to support the ex-mods by not using the site for a while. i’ll wait to see what kind of site they can come up with before i think about returning
[quote comment="7478"]Do you have any evidence to support your claim ex-admins were involved in what you call “attacking the site”?
I know first hand that’s not true.[/quote]
And do you have any proof of that either?
[quote]Some users might notice their statistics, class or info have been changed. This is due to ex-moderators trying to ruin empornium. The problem is solved.
The above can be read on Empornium, put there by the new TP staff. If that were true, it would be one hell of an accomplishment; gaining database access, without admin access and while being IP box-banned, don’t you think?[/quote]
It is possible just one or two admins had previously setup a backdoor including other priviledged accounts. It’s happened before as some admins are of the vindicative variety. Given the way the ex-admins/mods who have left haven’t made a public plea (we’re talking several days now) to the members who have followed them to the smutpeddlers forum (or even on the IRC channel) to NOT do what they were doing (such as spamming comments, uploading fake torrents, and currently rating every torrent low), shows the exact kind of spiteful traits of someone who would have put backdoors into the box to wreak havoc on the backend. Unless TP and/or the main administrator was incredibly anal and thorough with their security audits (and from experience, that is usually not the case), they probably were not able to close those off until just prior to that database rollback.
Just because the ex-admins were IP boxed banned doesn’t mean they could have shelled in from another box during that short period BEFORE they were boxed banned where they still had access to do the damage which took place. Were those Empornium servers set up to allow access in an anal matter (i.e. explicitly denying all and allowing from specific registered IP’s, subnet ranges, accessible only from a particular box setup for access in their cluster, etc?)? What I am getting at is there are so many potential holes depending on how their backend was configured.
As it stands, I don’t trust either side nor do I really give a shit who is telling the truth because in the larger view, anyone who is deeply pissed off about this to the level where they needed to actually do all that comment bombing, spent who knows how long putting together the comments in those captures, and generally ranting on IRC and likely other forums obviously needs to reevaluate themselves as to what is important in life and maybe get out more often rather than being stuck to their computer downloading and watching porn all the time. If this is really that important, then bottomline they are truely sad case individuals.
more updates:
http://torrentfreak.com/empornium-targetpoint-sold-us-out/
[quote comment="7497"][quote comment="7478"]Do you have any evidence to support your claim ex-admins were involved in what you call “attacking the site”?
I know first hand that’s not true.[/quote]
And do you have any proof of that either?[/quote]
If you make a claim like that, it’s up to you to provide the evidence. You haven’t.
I have been banned from Empornium after vigorously promoting the boycott :D Now … until cheggit.com comes alive, what’s a decent alternative?
A Good alternative is PureTnA - http://www.puretna.com/
What has been done to Empornium is a tragedy. The new design must have been made by a blind man and I have noticed that the number of quality posts have decreased greatly. Empornium is doomed and will definately close at this rate!
[quote comment="8100"]A Good alternative is PureTnA - http://www.puretna.com/
What has been done to Empornium is a tragedy. The new design must have been made by a blind man and I have noticed that the number of quality posts have decreased greatly. Empornium is doomed and will definately close at this rate![/quote]
That blind man as you call him is noos, he made that design and put it up there. He’s sysop at both PureTnA and empornium.
I myself have been banned from Emp for questioning their policy of allowing these Japanese rape videos to be seeded. Not only are they greedy, but they’re against freedom of speech, too :D:D
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! zcsbfwhxyst
dkxuotem
cibdrwjw
If figures that the Fucking Jews would be behind this shit!
The admins at puretna are bunch of jumped up little pissants especially dr online who is a total prick, makes his mouth go and abuses users and if they dare respond he bans them. I can only imagine he got smacked around at school, and had his lunch money taken away regularly. He should get himself a life outside of puretna!
What a shame! I’ll miss Empronium.
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