: The shutdown occurred during an intense global crackdown on major torrent sites, following the arrests and closures associated with KickassTorrents and Torrentz.eu.
Legal and ethical controversies The success of Extratorrent and similar sites made them targets for copyright enforcement and legal action. Rights holders, industry groups, and governments argued that torrent indexes facilitated large‑scale copyright infringement by making it easy to find and download copyrighted works. Legal pressure included domain seizures, litigation threats, and actions against associated services (hosting providers, advertisers, and payment processors). Even where index sites argued they merely provided links and did not host infringing content, courts and anti‑piracy coalitions often considered them contributory facilitators. The ethical debate around such sites was complex: proponents emphasized access to information, decentralized sharing, and resistance to monopolistic distribution channels; critics highlighted harm to creators, lost revenue, and risks from malware-laden or low-quality copies. : The shutdown occurred during an intense global
ExtraTorrent.cc was once one of the most prominent BitTorrent indexes globally, known for its massive library and active community of "release groups" like ETRG and SaM. 🛑 Current Status (2026) The original is no longer operational. ExtraTorrent
: Visitors were met with a message from the site’s administrator, SaM, stating: Legal pressure included domain seizures