Extratorrent.cc shutdown effect – The Pirate Bay keeps crashing intermittently
Have you noticed a peculiar thing since the ExtraTorrent.cc shut down permanently? Visit The Pirate Bay and you will find it working normally. Search for a movie, TV show or any other torrent and the torrent website will suddenly throw up a CloudFlare error. A couple of tries later you may get your torrent download as you wished but it seems that the world’s most popular torrent website, The Pirate Bay is not able to cope up with the deluge of torrent downloaders after the demise of ExtraTorrent.cc.
The problem is somewhat aggravated by the sudden spurt of ExtraTorrent clones and proxies which are filled with malware, adware and viruses. Torrent users prefer the cleaner and safer TPB to these clones and as such are flocking to TPB resulting in users getting constant errors when browsing TPB.
For the uninitiated, ExtraTorrent.cc used to be the second most visited torrent website after TPB and was used to download games, movies, music, NFSW stuff, and e-book torrents. When the ExtraTorrent ship seemed to sail in calm waters, out of blue SAM the owner of ExtraTorrent mysteriously shut down the world’s second-largest torrent download website on May 17th.
Like SAM warned, the Internet was soon filled with wannabe ExtraTorrent clones and mirror websites. Most of these websites were using ExtraTorrent skin almost fooling the torrent community into believing they were genuine ExtraTorrent heirs. A similar site called ExtraTorrent.cd was resurrected by so-called ‘former admins.’ But soon torrent downloaders found the site filled with malicious software and viruses. So, to fulfill their torrent needs, users flocked to The Pirate Bay. TPB apparently wasn’t prepared to handle the huge influx of former ET users.
Speaking with TorrentFreak, a TPB staffer said that the ‘big wave of new visitors’ has caused ‘gateway errors’ a tech lingo for website downtime due to heavy traffic. TPB admin Spud17 says that though TPB has seen a heavy increase in torrent downloaders, their membership registrations remain constant suggesting that torrent users are just seeking an alternative torrent download website.
“Registrations haven’t suddenly increased or anything like that, and visitor numbers to the forum are about the same as usual.”
Indians had been great fans of ExtraTorrent.cc and India accounted for over 50% of the total ExtraTorrent.cc visitors. Now, Spud17 says that over 40% of new visits registered on The Pirate Bay came from India. Mind you, ExtraTorrent was blocked by the top Indian communications watchdog, TRAI in 2016 and could be visited only by using VPN or proxies.
More Torrent website shutdowns to come?
We had reported at the start of 2017 that the media companies, anti-piracy groups, and authorities were creating extra pressure on torrent websites to shut down their business. The ExtraTorrent’s shutdown comes in the wake of other popular torrent site closures. Authorities successfully shut down KickAssTorrents and Torrentz.eu last year and it was followed by the shutdown of popular movie streaming websites like Putlocker.ch and Coke&Popcorn. TPB has been the top target of such anti-piracy groups but it has withheld the pressure preferring to shift its hydra-like domain to different addresses. With Google, Microsoft and other tech companies joining hands with ISPs to root out torrents websites altogether from the face of the earth, TPB and the remaining torrent websites face a daunting task to stay afloat.
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