Three Mirror Domain Names Lost By ExtraTorrent
Following an outside complaint, ExtraTorrent, one of the world’s largest torrent indexes, has lost control over many of its important mirror domain names. According to the site’s operator, he has been locked out of his domain registrar’s control panel. Now, extra.to and extratorrent.site are the new official mirrors, as recommended by the site.
Trailing behind The Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent is the second largest torrent site with millions of daily visitors.
Several entertainment industry groups put pressure on hosting companies and domain name services to take action against ExtraTorrent due to its popularity.
Consequently, ExtraTorrent ended up losing control of three domain names used for its official mirror sites over the past several days. Thus, extratorrent.rocks, etproxy.top and extratorrent.date are no longer available following a complaint from rightholders.
The site’s operator mentioned Subreg.cz as the culprit while speaking to TorrentFreak. The Czech domain registrar apparently locked the torrent site out of its control panel while the domains stopped resolving.
The registrar allegedly suggested the torrent site to take the matter to court, as it said that there’s nothing it could do to resolve the situation.
“We don’t have access to the three domain names anymore. Subreg recommended us to go to court to resolve this issue, and ignored our requests,” ExtraTorrent’s SaM says.
While this sounds like a typical registrar domain suspension, there is definitely something more to this. Oddly, the registrar informed TorrentFreak that they are not responsible for the domain problems.
“These domain names are not blocked from our side. We got a complaint which we sent to the account holder,” a Subreg spokesperson says, noting that they functioned in agreement with ICANN rules.
The comment above clearly suggests that some higher authority is behind this decision. On the other hand, the domain WHOIS information doesn’t show any typical registry or registrar suspension notices. The domains have merely been stripped of their “a records,” which means that they are not responding.
Even though ExtraTorrent lost three important mirror domains, the main ExtraTorrent.cc domain is still working as it is registered elsewhere. The same applies to many other official mirror domains.
ExtraTorrent has started redirecting all their mirrors to extratorrent.site and extra.to, which are now the official backups. The site’s operator endorses the latter, as it’s not blocked anywhere, yet.
When TorrentFreak asked the registrar to provide additional information about the discrepancy, they responded by saying that they only reveal details to the domain owner.
Source: TorrentFreak
