

Tell HN: .ly domains starting to have problems (letter.ly) - petervandijck

I got this email from letter.ly:<p>hello letterly authors,<p>last week, the agency that we used to register the letter.ly domain was taken down as a side effect of the war in libya (.ly is the libyan top level domain). our domain registration expired, and we were unable to renew it. as the expiration propagated, the site appeared to be dead and emails sent to your subscribers probably bounced.<p>1) sorry for the hassle. it's amazing that a physical war has affected our service in this way.<p>2) we are now letterly.net. this means that you will send emails to secretcode@letterly.net instead of secretcode@letter.ly, and new subscribers should be directed to letterly.net/yoururl.<p>if you have questions / comments / concerns, i am happy to address them.<p>peace.<p>- adam
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edw
To this I feel the need to reply with a big "duh!" Whenever I see a see a
product launch with an two-letter country code, I look it up if I don't
already know it and ask myself: Would I be willing to trust my business to
_this_ country's domain registrar?

Joyent's Node SmartMachine services (no.de)? Germany: Yes!

Twitter's URL shortener (t.co)? Colombia? _Hugo Chavez?_ Umm, not really.

There are real countries behind these country codes and companies expose
themselves to risks associated with those countries—and are arguably
supporting the governments of those countries—by using a domain name with that
country code.

HN readers learn that GoDaddy's run by a megalomaniacal big game hunter and
they run for the exits. HN readers discover a punny domain name can be had by
giving Qaddafi or Hugo Chavez money (however indirectly) and they place their
orders. Hello?!

~~~
asclepiades
Hugo Chavez rules Venezuela, not Colombia. In fact, under his leadership
Venezuela has been at times close to going at war with Colombia.

I think you have a point, but using such an example makes you sound a snob
western who divides the world in "countries I am fond of" and "countries I am
not fond of".

~~~
edw
Yes, I am quite embarrassed by this error. Now, if I'd decided to register a
Colombian domain name, maybe I would have done a little more research.

Regarding your second paragraph, I think you may simply have a chip on your
shoulder. My comfort with a German domain name is based on my knowledge that
Germany's been a stable democracy for the last sixty years. I know very little
about South America and am therefore more leery of domains backed by
governments there.

I am quite fond of the UK and France, but given the curious libel and
intellectual property legal environments of those two countries,
respectively—yes, from my American and therefore evil, small-minded
perspective—I wouldn't want to expose my business to those environment by
using a registrar in the UK or France.

So sorry to not be the racist cultural-imperialist Europhile you'd like me to
be.

~~~
asclepiades
Reading what I wrote, I now understand that it both sounded too harsh and
completely lost the sarcasm in "snob western" (I should have added a [;)]).
Believe me, as an Italian living in Brazil I have too often been accused of
"western imperialism" to know what it feels like, and I hate it. I am really
sorry, please excuse me.

And as I intended to say, I was agreeing with you: I would not trust my entire
business to a .LY domaim, and do believe that .DE is more stable than, say,
.SO. I was saying that the lack os research combined with the Germany/Colombia
example was not the best way to defend your position, particularly in face of
those who would probably consider it a cultural-imperialist one.

~~~
edw
I too apologize for being so thin skinned. I spend a lot of time trying to be
understanding and open-minded, so I get pissed off when I feel like people
assume that I'm "part of the problem" because I'm white and male and whatever.
Not that you'd know any of that.

One of the things I've learned in my travels is that people are very good at
identifying other people's (and other cultures') weaknesses and significantly
less skilled at identifying their own. Mea culpa.

------
rianjs
I find it amazing that letter.ly finds it amazing that a _physical war_ might
disrupt their normal service(s).

~~~
romaniv
From what I understand, they aren't located in Libya. Would you find it
amazing if a war some middle-eastern country shut down Gmail?

I think the moral of the story here is that an important system like DNS
should be distributed (real distributed, not the kind of distributed it is
right now).

~~~
eli
The DNS for .ly _is_ distributed. The point of failure was the registrar.

~~~
jarin
Is it possible after registration to transfer your domain to a registrar that
isn't accredited for that particular TLD?

------
rexreed
The DHS / Department of Justice have proven that US domains are not
particularly safe or immune from arbitrary shutdown either.

~~~
edanm
"The DHS / Department of Justice have proven that US domains are not
particularly safe or immune from arbitrary shutdown either."

That's true, but you're using false dichotomy - safe or not.

This is an issue of percentages. Technically, the United States might turn
into a dictatorship overnight and choose to disconnect from the Internet, or
be conquered, or a lot of other things might happen (most of which are less
radical; the DOD orders a takedown of your domain, for example).

But it's pretty clear (to me at least) that buying a .com means you're _much
more likely_ to not have any issues, than buying a .ly. And if a registrar has
just gone down, taking thousands of domain names with it, I'll be right -
.com's will be statistically more stable.

~~~
rexreed
I don't think the .LY registrars or the high-profile .LY domain owners (such
as bit.ly) would have agreed with your assertion that the .LY domain name put
them at a substantially higher risk than registering a .COM. If so, what
rational business person would risk their business, brand, and traffic on the
.LY domain? If you assert that a .LY domain doesn't / didn't have an
intrinsically higher risk than a .COM, then my original statement isn't the
false dichotomy that you think it is.

Of course, here in April 2011 now we know that the risk was there all along.
And now, any sane / rational business owner should think twice / again about
registering a .LY domain.

But given that 12 months ago, the above statement that a .LY represented a
substantially higher risk than a .COM would have been laughed at. Who would
have thought that there would be civil war in Libya in 2009 or 2010? If you
did, then maybe a job in political science awaits you.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
People _were_ saying it was risky 12 months ago, and 24 months ago. Bit.ly
chose their domain because it's short, and they probably couldn't afford as
short of a name for a .com. In retrospect they should have taken bit.us or
something similar.

Now their plan seems to be to distribute amongst many domains (having used
j.mp a lot recently) so there's no single point of failure and that seems to
be working as well.

Bit.ly's a unique case though, and doesn't represent the fad of taking .ly
domains because it turns your company name into an adverb.

------
livejamie
I wonder what registrar they were using? I registered status.ly 2 years ago
with libyanspider and they seem to be pretty up-front about what's going on.

<http://libyanspider.com/m/announcements.php?id=19>
<http://libyanspider.com/m/announcements.php?id=20>

They even have a big red phone number on their homepage for emergencies.

I no longer own the domain, but it seems like their customers aren't affected
by this.

~~~
drewvolpe
I use Libyan Spider for Locate.ly. Their site has been having some issues the
last couple of weeks, but I was able to re-register it last week without a
problem.

------
rexreed
I think .ly domain owners should consider switching to .li domains.
Liechtenstein has a better track record for stability and rule of law to limit
the exposure to arbitrary shutdown.

------
mbesto
What will happen to <http://bit.ly> links if Gaddafi shuts down the Internet
in Libya due to protests?

[http://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-to-http-bit-ly-
links-i...](http://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-to-http-bit-ly-links-if-
Gaddafi-shuts-down-the-Internet-in-Libya-due-to-protests)

~~~
sjs382
Worst-case scenario: you'll need to install a browser extension to
:s/bit.ly/j.mp/g

------
eli
Not to further pile on, but this is also a great reason to register your
critical domains for many years into the future. Even for boutique TLDs, the
yearly registration is pretty trivial compared to the potential downside of
losing your name.

------
hessenwolf
Certain extensions are not accessible through the proxy where I work, e.g.,
.nr. That represents about 180,000 people in about 100 countries worldwide. I
assume it is not specific to this company.

Just a little something else to think of.

~~~
wladimir
Why would they block .nr (Nauru) domains? Does a lot of spam/scams originate
there?

~~~
hessenwolf
WTF. I totally thought that was Nigeria and you were making some sort of Star
Wars joke I didn't think Natalie Portman was hot enough to bother getting.

Yes - some domains get blocked because a lot of spam originates there.

:Zugriff verweigert / Access denied

------
erik_p
Isn't the issue here more that they waited until the last minute to renew
their domain and because a war broke out they are S.O.L. ?

~~~
erik_p
"our domain registration expired, and we were unable to renew it."

