The Fall Of ExtraTorrent & Top 3 Alternatives
Amid growing crackdowns on pirate sites, Extratorrent – the world’s second largest torrent indexing site – has come under the radar. The site has gone offline last month, leaving millions of users stranded with no reliable options on offers. Extratorrent’s owner, SaM, didn’t mention the exact reason behind the sudden move and only said: “it’s time we say goodbye”. However, word goes around that the sudden shutdown was triggered by another major crackdown by some anti-piracy group.
Though Extratorrent warned its users to stay away from fake and clone sites, people have started looking for reliable Extratorrent.cc alternatives to download content. As you can guess, three replacement torrent sites emerged soon after ET went down. They took no time to take over from the fallen king and are offering a massive selection of data across different categories.
The Pirate Bay
http://thepiratebay.org
Despite several shutdown efforts, the Pirate Bay continues to deliver one of the biggest collections of pirate data across different categories. The site, also called “the king of torrents”, has been around for years and is still serving a plethora of torrent consumers. Music, movies, games, software, eBooks, audiobooks, you just name it, the Pirate Bay shall have it for you. The site had to switch from the original domain and is now continuing the good run on a .org domain. The Pirate Bay is one of the best Extratorrent.cc alternative as of now.
RARBG
http://rarbg.to/
Just like the Pirate Bay, RARBG has also made it big in the torrent community and appears to be a great alternative to Extratorrent.cc. The site, which now replaces ExtraTorrent as the second large torrent indexing site, offers a massive selection of data to live up to your expectations. Founded in 2008, it started off as a Bulgarian tracker, but now offers torrents and magnet links for movies, tv shows, games, music, software, and pornography.
YTS/YIFI.ag
http://yts.ag
Among other websites, users have been migrating to YTS for pulling a massive collection of Hollywood movies in fine prints, and the site fits perfectly in the list of Extratorrent.cc alternatives. However, the site isn’t related in any way to the original YTS or the YIFI group. It positioned itself among top torrent sites by successfully stealing the group’s name. The irony, however, is, despite stealing their names, the site asks its users to stay away from cloned proxy sites.
The Fall Of ExtraTorrent
As the user base of these and other torrent sites continues to grow, the alleged risk of more crackdowns by anti-piracy organizations also increases. Originally, shutting down pirate sites was a mere cup of tea. If one went down, several clones cropped up with different names & domains and that too on a daily basis. But now, with new piracy rules in place, things have changed a lot.
To recall, in July 2016, when US federal authorities brought down one of the most famous torrent sites, KickAssTorrents, the entire torrent community was rattled. They even targeted six related domains to make sure that no clones showed up even after their anti-piracy drive ended. The result being, the owner of KickAssTorrents got arrested and extradited to the States. He now faces charges of money laundering and criminal copyright infringement of up to $1 billion, which could possibly get him 20 years in prison.
Their crackdown, which started stronger prosecution against torrent site owners, and additional support from top software companies such as Microsoft have roped in stronger tools to detect and block illegal downloads. And, from what we see, this could also be the reason behind the sudden shutdown of ExtraTorrent.
