Popular anime torrent site NYAA has lost control over its Swedish .SE domain name, which was deactivated a few hours ago. As a result, the site has become unreachable. The domain status suggests that the responsible registry intervened, which is something that could happen in response to a copyright-related court order.

NYAA is heralded as one of the top sources for anime content and has an audience of millions of regular users.

The site has operated for years without any significant trouble. However, a few hours ago it suddenly became unreachable due to a worrying domain name issue.

The NYAA.se domain was updated with the infamous “serverhold” status which suggests that the responsible registry interfered. The status has been used in the past when domain names have been flagged due to copyright issues and stripped of their DNS entries.

“This status code is set by your domain’s Registry Operator. Your domain is not activated in the DNS,” ICANN writes.

As a result of the issue, NYAA is no longer accessible from its .SE domain. TorrentFreak reached out to the responsible registry for a comment, but at the time of writing we haven’t heard back.

https://torrentfreak.com/images/nyaa.png

If the registry is indeed involved, then there must be some sort of legal authority backing the request. The .SE domain registry previously stated that it will not suspend any domain names unless there is a court order.

“We believe that the judicial authorities should determine whether or not it is appropriate to take action against a particular domain name registrant. Unless we have been ordered to do so, there is a risk that we could call the validity of the legal process into question by taking action before a ruling is passed,” Punkt SE said.

Thus far it’s unclear on what grounds the domain was deactivated. A copyright complaint is one of the possibilities, but this hasn’t been confirmed.

Whatever the reason for the deactivation, there’s still hope for the site’s users. In theory, the NYAA team could return online if they setup an alternative domain. That is, if the domain name deactivation is the only issue they are facing at the moment, which remains to be seen.

If more information becomes available on NYAA’s domain name troubles we will update this article accordingly.

Source: Torrentfreak.com

never mind