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ExtraTorrent (commonly abbreviated ET) was an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Until its shut down it was among the top 5 BitTorrent indexes in the world, where visitors could search, download and contribute magnet links and
torrent file In the BitTorrent file distribution system, a torrent file or meta-info file is a computer file that contains metadata about files and folders to be distributed, and usually also a list of the network locations of trackers, which are computers ...
s, which facilitate
peer-to-peer file sharing Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program th ...
among users of the
BitTorrent BitTorrent is a Protocol (computing), communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a Decentralised system, decentralized manner. The protocol is d ...
protocol.


History

ExtraTorrent was founded in 2006 by the administrator who acted under the alias "SaM". In November 2016, the website celebrated its 10-year anniversary. The website briefly changed their logo with a celebratory theme and launched a contest for users to guess the most downloaded movies on the site in exchange for prizes.


Shutdown

On 17 May 2017, ExtraTorrent voluntarily ceased operations out of the blue. The entire website was replaced with a message from the administrator, stating that the website was to shut down permanently (as well as all mirror domains), and wipe all data relating to the website and its content. The website was already down for days due to an emergency maintenance situation, just two days before the website shut down permanently. At the time of its shutdown, ExtraTorrent's primary domain name was the 291st most viewed website globally, according to statistics from Alexa Internet.


Clones

Shortly after the shutdown of the official ExtraTorrent website, multiple clones and imitations appeared online. Initially, the most popular one of these clones was located at extratorrent.cd. While this was at first speculated to be an official rehosting, it was later discovered to be a re-skinned of
The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay, commonly abbreviated as TPB, is a free searchable online index of Film, movies, music, video games, Pornographic film, pornography and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank , The Pirate Bay facilitates the connection ...
, serving exact information from their database, under an ExtraTorrent interface. Despite this however, the website still quickly gained a large userbase, reaching two million
unique visitors A unique user is a term in web analytics that refers to data of a Pageview of a unique IP, whose presence is only counted once, regardless of the number of pages they visit. This definition does not count repeat or returning users for a standard pe ...
in May 2017. To date, there are no new "official" ExtraTorrent mirrors as the database for the original was wiped during its shutdown in 2017. The site was blocked in Spain in 2019, with the blocking of other similar websites such as Lime Torrents and 1337x.


References

{{Intellectual property activism File sharing networks Defunct BitTorrent websites Internet properties established in 2006 Internet properties disestablished in 2017