See The Real Reason Why Extratorrent Was shutdown Permanently

Jay Henry
2 min readMay 18, 2017

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RIP to the world’s second largest Torrent site index.

The site has been permanently shut down and if you are one of its avid visitors, when next you pop into the website you will be greeted with a message like the one on the screenshot below.

The reason why the torrent site was shutdown remains a mystery.

Website owner SaM didn’t specify why. He only said, “It’s time we say goodbye.” but according to a tragic fate faced by Artem

But, according to a tragic fate faced by Artem Vaulin, owner of kickAssTorrent. We might see a possible reason why the torrent indexing site had to say Goodbye the way they did. which was one of the world’s top torrent indexing sites until it was shut down by US federal authorities on July 21st, 2016.

KickAssTorrent was one of the world’s top torrent indexing sites until it was shut down by US federal authorities on July 21st, 2016.

The normal thing that usually follows after a torrent indexing site shuts down is the surfacing of various similar ones. This was a big problem for the Authorities fighting against piracy and copyright violation. But the US authorities that knocked KickAssTorrent off immediately seized six(6) related domain names.

Under pressure from the MPAA and RIAA, the US arrested alleged site owner Artem Vaulin.

But the US authorities that knocked KickAssTorrent off immediately seized six(6) related domain names so as to make reduce the possibility of several others popping up.

Under pressure from the MPAA and RIAA, the US Federal Authorities arrested the site owner, Vaulin.

Although several similar KickAssTorrent sites have surfaced since the shutdown, they are still struggling and they are not anywhere close to KickAssTorrent’s reputation before it met its predicament.

So, what happened to Vaulin?

He was extradited to the States where he will face charges of money laundering and criminal copyright infringement of up to $1 billion. If convicted, according to law, he may face up to twenty years in jail.

Besides an increased prosecution against torrent site owners, top software companies like Microsoft now have stronger tools to detect and block illegal downloads.

“Founded in November 2006, Extratorrent has become very popular among the torrent users over the course and has been shut down by the exact people that created it.

Maybe somebody is putting pressure on the faces behind Extratorrent or they are just scared of facing the same fate as Vaulin, any one of these could be the reason why ExtraTorrent permanently shut down.

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Jay Henry

Web Developer| Digital marketer| WordPress Enthusiast| Motivational Speaker