YggTorrent Loses Control of Domain Name Without Warning

YggTorrent, the largest French torrent community, has lost control of its main '.do' domain name. The domain was presumably put on hold by the registry or registrar after some type of complaint. One of the site's operators condemns the action but business continues as usual through one of YggTorrent's many backup domains.

Most large torrent sites target a global audience, but there are many local favorites as well.

YggTorrent, for example, is one of the largest French-language torrent sites on the Internet, serving millions of users per month.

The French site is not the typical torrent indexer. YggTorrent sees itself as a community instead, one with a dedicated tracker, something that’s quite rare these days. The site was founded in 2017, to fill the gap left behind when T411 closed shop.

Like any other site of its stature, YggTorrent faces constant pressure from anti-piracy forces. The site is blocked by French Internet providers following a court order and rightsholders are doing all they can to expose the identities of its operators.

YggTorrent Domain Name Troubles

Thus far, these efforts haven’t brought down the site. YggTorrent sees the blocking efforts as ‘fair game’ and trusts that users will find their way around any obstacles. However, a recent intervention goes a step too far, the site believes.

Earlier this week, the Yggtorrent.do domain was rendered inaccessible. The domain name was registered through Njalla (1337 Services) and pointed to Cloudflare nameservers. An ‘unknown’ third party then updated these to HOLD.NETIM.NET nameservers, effectively rendering the site inaccessible.

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According to a YggTorrent operator, it’s not clear who took this action or why. Njalla doesn’t seem to be involved as all information is listed correctly there. The company instead told YggTorrent that the .do registry may have something to do with it.

Registry / Registrar?

While we can’t confirm anything at this time, the NETIM.NET nameservers suggest that the domain registrar Netim could be involved. Njalla typically uses a third-party registrar for its domains and Netim may be one of them.

We asked Njalla to confirm that it works with Netim but the company didn’t immediately reply. Netim didn’t respond to our request for comment either and the same applies to the NIC.do registry.

Whoever is responsible for this domain takeover, YggTorrent is not happy with the lack of due process and transparency.

“Frankly, we don’t find it normal that someone can hijack a domain name as they wish. Website blocking, ok, but outright taking control of a domain calls into question a lot of things like freedom of expression on the Internet,” one of YggTorrent’s operators tells us.

Down, Not Out

Needless to say, the domain takeover immediately stopped all traffic to the site, albeit with a slight delay due to DNS caching. YggTorrent shared a screenshot of its traffic stats on the day that this happened.

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YggTorrent has no plans to throw in the towel. This isn’t the first time that one of its domains has been suspended, and it likely won’t be the last time either.

The torrent site previously lost its .com domain following a complaint from the French anti-piracy outfit SACEM. The .ws registry later took action against Yggtorrent.ws, following a complaint from an unknown party.

With the .do ‘suspension’ yet another domain name bites the dust. The torrent site swiftly moved to a .wtf domain, for as long as it lasts, and remains online at the time of writing.