Demonoid Changed Its Domain Name Again

One of the oldest torrent trackers, Demonoid, has been fighting for its place in the sun over many years. Now the semi-private BitTorrent tracker has changed its .ph domain name for the Palau-based .pw. The operators of the service have yet to officially announce the change, which will help to improve the Demonoid’s availability on the Internet.

Earlier this year, Demonoid returned after almost 2 years of downtime, which began after a DDoS attack and legal troubles in its home country, Ukraine. Since then the tracker has been rebuilding its community and now accounts for millions of monthly visitors, which makes it one of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet once again.

Copyright holders are still trying to obstruct the Demonoid’s growth, and the site is currently plagued by blocking requests from them. Back in November, Italian Internet service providers blocked Demonoid. In addition, a few days ago major broadband providers in the United Kingdom were requested to do the same.

Moreover, the ranking of the site in Google search results has significantly diminished: if you search for “demonoid”, you will see a Wikipedia entry as the top result, because the Demonoid.ph was removed from the Google search results following a takedown notice. In respond, Demonoid switched domain names. Now it is redirecting.ph domain to demonoid.pw. The .pw domain was registered just a few days ago, following the reports of the UK court orders to block the tracker. However, it should be noted that the effects of such move will be limited: while it is easy to circumvent bans in Italy with a new domain, UK providers are usually quick to update their blacklists.