CYBERSPACE—Almost a year to the day following the closure of Empornium and PureTNA, one of the adult BitTorrent sites that many users of the other two flocked to has also announced that it is closing after a six year run. Visitors to Cheggit.net will now find a large banner across the top of the page that reads, "WTF is this shit? Where's my porn?"
The news was first reported this afternoon by TorrentFreak, which noted, “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.”
TF quotes the Cheggit founder as saying he started the site with the intention of making it copyright compliant. “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,” he is quoted as saying. “But as time went on, it just wasn’t feasible to do that and be in compliance.”
The admin also said that the decision to close the site was not made under duress from law enforcement or as “a ponzi scheme to relaunch Megaupload.”
However, in stating that the site was no longer able to stay “in compliance,” one can easily infer that aggressive actions by federal law enforcement was probably a mitigating factor in the ultimate decision to close. That said, Cheggit is not slipping away into oblivion without giving its users time to prepare.
“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,” insists the admin.
“Best decision?” he added. “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. As much as this may suck, it doesn’t suck near as much as just going away.”
