New York-based Art.sy, the art market equivalent of user-driven radio website Pandora, was forced to redirect web traffic to a back-up site this week. Sharing a domain suffix with war-torn Syrian Arab Republic, the popular new website went down and users have been redirected to Artsy.net.

Escalating violence in Syria where a bloody civil conflict has left about 60,000 dead, according to the United Nations, possibly contributed to the site's closure. Syria is under several U.S. government sanctions.

Bearing the suffix .sy has been a challenge for the up-and-coming website backed with millions of dollars from big-name investors.

Acquiring Syria's web suffix proved difficult in the first place, but now it appears that the website with the catchy name might have a permanent redirect.