ThePirateBay.org Suspended After Registrant Fails to Verify the Domain

The original domain address of The Pirate Bay, one of the world's oldest and most popular torrent websites, has been suspended by its registered domain name provider EuroDNS, after the registrant failed to verify the contact details. Several other popular domain addresses of the website continue to operate, however.

Visitors to thepiratebay.org are being greeted with the following message; "This domain name is pending Icann verification and has been suspended. If you are the owner of this domain you can reactivate this domain by logging into your EuroDNS account." TorrentFreak reports that the domain was suspended on Monday. At the time of writing, the domain was still returning the aforementioned error.

The suspension, as the notice reads, is likely because of the registrant's inability to verify the account. According to changes to the terms and conditions of Icann, a non-profit organisation which oversees domain names among several other things, requires domain name providers (registrars) to send a verification email to domain name holders (registrant) every time a domain is registered or its details have been modified. Failure to do so could result in suspension of the domain name. As per ThePirateBay.org's whois information, the website was last modified on November 24, 2015.

It is worth pointing out that ThePirateBay.org isn't the only domain for the decade old website. The website is accessible via several other domain names, many of which are now more popular than the original one. The suspension of the said domain also raises concerns whether domain name holders are carefully handling their domain names and are aware of changes to Icann's policy.