File Sharing Place
Years ago, FileSharingZ.com was actually known as FileSharingPlace.com. The reason for the change of name is a sad one: greed resulted in the website domain being hijacked.
Website domains cannot be bought (for life) and need to be rented from companies called registrars. These companies register domains for their customers, using their customers' names and addresses, thus providing their customers full (legal) ownership; in return they charge a yearly fee.
The company that was renting out FileSharingPlace.com and FileSharingDownloads.com, both collectively known as File Sharing Place, was ExtremeIS.com. ExtremeIS.com never registered the domains in its client's name, but rather in the name of its very own owner. That's right the owner of the company registered the domain in his own name.
The FileSharingPlace.com site remains online and accessible, even now so many years later. What can be seen at the site is an old backup copy of the original 2006 site, along with a load of banner advertisements, popups, interstitial advertisements, flash ads with sound,... basically a large collection of the most annoying ads on the web.
Read on to learn more...
The following includes extracts from various interviews with the unfortunate ex-owner of File Sharing Place.
ZeroPaid: Your old host and ad provider ExtremeIS.com has taken full control over the filesharingplace.com and filesharingdownloads.com domains and servers?
Yes, that is correct. Late 2003 I started renting filesharingplace.com, filesharingdownloads.com and two servers at ExtremeIS.com. The owner of the company, Ryan Porter, registered the domains in his own personal name. I was never aware of this as the domains came with so called ‘free’ WHOIS protection (WHOIS protection hides the identity in the registry, it is a very common practice since it protects the privacy of the owner).
In 2005 I wanted to switch hosts, which led to a series of problematic events (for me). In short: Mr. Porter refused to transfer the domains to me and forced me to put his advertisement on the sites. This included a popup on the start page of the program KLR, which was obviously much to my disliking.
In November 2006, Mr. Porter finally kicked me out of the servers for good. I was denied all access; even my forum account was deleted. His only motivation: Greed, File Sharing Place was quite a popular site, right from the start.
ZeroPaid: Oddly enough, the site's "About Us" reads: "File Sharing Place was formed in late 2003, domains were purchased in early 2004 and is operated by a group of dedicated individuals." What individuals were previously involved with the site and who is now in control over it?
The new owner of FileSharingPlace.com put that message up not so long after kicking me out. Not a word of it is true.
I founded FileSharingPlace by myself and I have run it since then by myself (worth mentioning though is my Forum staff, without them I wouldn’t be able to manage).
FileSharingPlace.com is now in control and operated by one individual: Ryan Porter. There is no group; in fact there isn’t even a single forum moderator.
The new and unrightful owner of FileSharingPlace.com actually sent out a message into the world where he tries to justify his actions:
Porter: I entered into a partnership in late 2003, early 2004. The agreement was for me to provide a server in exchange for full advertising rights on the website. There was no domain in use at the time as they were previously hosted with some sort of free hosting service and used a subdomain for the address. As with any partnership the duties were divided up among the partners.
I purchased the domains filesharingplace.com/net and filesharingdownloads.com/net and several other variations of the domain with my own money.
Not much above the message is true. Apparently the owner of ExtremeIS considers his "Custom Server Hosting Plans" as a sort of partnership, a partnership where one party retains all rights and the other gets nothing. The following extract from the response to the above message, by the unfortunate ex-owner of File Sharing Place, is simply shocking:
I purchased the FileSharingPlace.com domain with donations I had received from members. Members who have been with us since the start will remember the fundraising period, and the donators themselves too of course! This was well before I even came in contact with ExtremeIS.
Hopefully the right people get to see and read this article. And those right people would in the first place be anyone thinking about becoming a customer at ExtremeIS.com, let this be a warning on how things are handled at ExtremeIS.
As a closure a couple of statements from people in the file sharing world:
Jared, aka "soulxtc," Chief Editor at ZeroPaid.com:
Hearing Mavol's story makes me even angrier at the fact that somebody could just steal years of somebody elses blood, sweat, and tears with seemingly little remorse or repercussions.
Ernesto, founder and main editor at TorrentFreak.com:
It is unfortunate to see that all the work that Mavol put in his site over the past three years is being taken away from him by a greedy and selfish webhost: Ryan Porter.
