With millions of daily visitors ExtraTorrent is the second largest torrent site, trailing only behind The Pirate Bay.
The site’s popularity puts it in the crosshairs of various entertainment industry groups, who put pressure on hosting companies and domain name services to take action.
As a result, ExtraTorrent has now lost control over it primary domain ExtraTorrent.cc. Since this morning the site’s domain has become unreachable around the world, and a whois search reveals that this is due to a “clienthold” status.
This status is set by the domain registrar, Internet BS in this case, and informs the registry not to activate the DNS. As a result, the website in question will be inaccessible.
We have seen this status on suspended domains before. According to ICANN the clienthold tag is uncommon and “usually enacted during legal disputes, non-payment, or when your domain is subject to deletion.”
TorrentFreak reached out to the registrar Internet BS for a comment on the situation, but the company informed us that they can’t reveal any information regarding the domains of their customers to a third party.
It’s likely, however, that the company suspended the domain after complaints from copyright holders. Internet BS previously disconnected the domain of another torrent site, BitTorrent.pm, fearing that it could be held liable for facilitating copyright infringement.
While ExtraTorrent has now lost its primary domain name, the site is still available through various backup domains such as Extra.to. The site’s operator hasn’t yet responded to our request for comment, but it’s likely that the site will pick an official new domain in the near future.
Update March 3: The clienthold status is gone and it looks like Extratorrent has control over the domain again.
