Piratebay.org Domain Sold For $50,000 And ThePirateBay.com Is Next

Multiple Pirate Bay-related domains became available this month after their owners failed to renew their registration. Yesterday, Piratebay.org was sold for $50,000 in a Dropcatch auction. Now, the next one to go on sale is ThePiratebay.com.

Both domains were previously registered to the official Pirate Bay (TPB) site. During its operation for nearly two decades, the Pirate Bay team kept many ‘backup’ domains as an option, in case something happened. This includes numerous unique TLDs, but TPB additionally owned Piratebay.org and ThePiratebay.com (which expired recently)

The domains were initially listed by Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij as the registrant. The same Swedish address (Neij’s) was listed in Whois data as well until recently. However, for some unknown reason, the registrant let both Piratebay.org and ThePiratebay.com expire.

But this wouldn’t cause problems for the torrent site. These domains were never used as the site’s main address. At one point, ThePiratebay.com did redirect users to the original .org domain, but that’s about it.

Piratebay.org auction

After the Piratebay.org domain wasn’t renewed, the professional ‘drop catch‘ service Dropcatch.com scooped up the domain and auctioned it for a lucrative price.

But these domains are not valuable to outsiders. This became quite clear from the auction yesterday, where Piratebay.org (without “the”) was sold for $50,000 to a bidder named ‘clvrfls.’ (Source: TorrentFreak)

What will happen to Piratebay.org now?

The new owner’s intentions with the domain are unclear, but the site’s nature makes it well-suited for monetization with an advertising feed (like running a Pirate Bay proxy on the domain).

If you visit the site, it simply says that “piratebay.org is coming soon.” Those who lost the bid yesterday’s auction will get another chance as ThePiratebay.com is expected to be auctioned later this week, followed by ThePiratebay.net and Piratebay.net.

The post Piratebay.org Domain Sold For $50,000 And ThePirateBay.com Is Next appeared first on Fossbytes.

Piratebay.org Domain Sold For $50,000 And ThePirateBay.com Is Next
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