If Libya Shuts Down the Internet, What Happens To .ly Domains?

http://www.centernetworks.com/libya-shuts-down-the-internet-domains

by moses1400 • 15 years ago

64 60 15 years ago

centernetworks.com

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

Hopefully? Stop abusing country code TLDs already...

slillibri• 15 years ago

Huh, hopeful.ly isn't registered yet...

TeMPOraL• 15 years ago

Or at least please use TLDs that together with domain name actually try to resemble some English words, and are not just "take a noun, cut suffix, add .ly" mashups.

StavrosK11• 15 years ago

What do you suggest? Getting a .com domain? Have you tried to do that recently? All dictionary words and most two-word combinations are taken by squatters. I searched for a domain name for a new web app the other day and wanted a .com name, it was almost impossible to find anything. I spent two days searching until I found something.

.net and .org are better, but users always expect (and type in) .com.

petercooper2• 15 years ago

I agree with the argument but am also beginning to be convinced by the opposing argument for many cases.. Consider 37signals' products, they don't have the product name in the verbatim .com form for any that I see - they've had to append words on the end. Apple doesn't own MacBook.com. Even companies who own their product names as domains (e.g. Fogbugz.com) aren't necessarily using them as a primary URL. It seems customers/users aren't /that/ fazed by it.

iwwr• 15 years ago

.ch? We could use a few flags of convenience on the virtual seas.

Legion• 15 years ago

> .net and .org are better, but users always expect (and type in) .com.

Which makes country code TLDs an answer... how? They're not .com either.

haploid2• 15 years ago

Do you think there are a lot of bricks-and-mortar entrepreneurs who bitch endlessly about the lack of alternative planets on which to snap up cheap real estate or unique business name trademarks?

If the name you want is already owned, make contact and negotiate a price. You know, like everybody else in meatspace does with land, trademarks, etc.

chaosmachine• 15 years ago

"most two-word combinations are taken by squatters"

Not true. Spend a few minutes playing with this: http://impossibility.org/

guelo2• 15 years ago

There's also the USA issue with .com. Sure, ICE seems to be targeting torrent domains for seizure for now but no one knows who they'll go after next or if your business will be collateral damage from some other seizure, with no due process or recourse.

abstractbill• 15 years ago

It's not actually that bad. I recently wrote a script that sends me daily emails of all .com domains that are expiring that day, sorted by length, and by a measure of how "English-like" they are (just using a frequency table for pairs of letters). I was surprised by how much good stuff is available.

ericflo• 15 years ago

Just make up a word, that's what we did.

mkramlich2• 15 years ago

And part of the problem is that some people are "squatting" solely because others are truly squatting. Defensive domain squatting, you might call it.

I'm all for abolishing the TLD suffixes totally since (a) they're not used consistently anymore anyway, and (b) it reduces confusion between cases like foo.com and foo.org and foo.net, etc -- unsophisticated users (who are the majority) may assume some or all are the same service or purpose, but they are not. Yes, in a way, in acts to increase demand for a single namespace, but on the other hand, the same sorts of workarounds and naming hacks are still available (add extra words, suffixes, dashes, etc.).

I personally now like fun/weird non-sensical non-specific "made up" names because (a) they're more likely to not already be taken, and (b) they could be used for an almost infinite variety of purposes justifiably. For example: www.spooflurk.com could be for shoes, sex, politics, a CV, a company, a game, a band, whatever, whereas www.shoe-sales.com is rightly expected to be pretty much about selling shoes. Yes you'll get less "organic" traffic (and less accidental traffic, which may sometimes be the same thing) on the other hand I'm a firm believer that the most important thing is to provide something people want, and eventually the right number and mix of people will find out about it anyway, regardless of the name. The noise to signal ratio in the world is pretty bad so quality stands out and people talk.

gambler• 15 years ago

If there wasn't an artificially created shortage of TLDs, people probably wouldn't abuse country domains.

Besides, this game has started long time ago. It's not like .com, .net and .org bear any meaning either. Domains today are not really semantic. They might have been 15 years ago, but not now.

elouise• 15 years ago

they go away.

jdp232• 15 years ago

well-summarized :-)

atgm• 15 years ago

Why do people use .ly anyway? It's not like there aren't other two-letter domains out there.

endtime• 15 years ago

Probably at first because it was a common English suffix and/or had a lot of short, readable domains available. Now it's trendy on top of that.

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

It's some dumb marketing gimmick. The idea basically seems to boil down to "only old foggies use the major gTLDs these days, lets be hip and make our company name an adjective that is also our URL".

timerickson3• 15 years ago

It's more than a gimmick. A recognizable and memorable URL has proven to be extremely beneficial to new startups. Memorable .com addresses are becoming endangered, or very very expensive.

carlygeehr• 15 years ago

because how else would my entire url be just my first name (car.ly)? true, probably a mis-use... but really fun, in a super nerdy kind of way.

zach• 15 years ago

It's a domain fad that (as far as I can tell) started with Writely becoming popular five years ago. Here's a rundown of recent domain fads as I recall them:

2003: del.icio.us con.fuses.us

2004: 37signals helps create 43 Things and Jay-Z has "99 Problems" -- coincidence? I think not.

2005: Flickr makes a splash and gets acquired, penultimate vowels no longr requird

2006: Writely, the superbly adverbly named webapp, goes Googly

2007: Xobni presses rewind (okay, this one never took off)

2008: Adverbs come on stronger with .ly

2009: URL shorteners go.to 6 characters or less

I can't actually think of a domain name fad that hit last year. Any suggestions?

Charuru• 15 years ago

The schadenfreude is strong in this thread.

ajays• 15 years ago

Dammit, schadenfreu.de is already registered....

Keyframe• 15 years ago

Why do people keep using that word - schadenfreude, when peinlich would be more suitable?

mkramlich2• 15 years ago

peinlich is more suitable but alas it's taken by a squatter who wants $50k for it ;)

guelo2• 15 years ago

I do not believe that would affect DNS since it is distributed. The root zone file has five servers listed as authoritative for .ly

  LY. NS AUTH02.NS.UU.NET.
  LY. NS PHLOEM.UOREGON.EDU.
  LY. NS DNS.LTTNET.NET.
  LY. NS DNS1.LTTNET.NET.
  LY. NS NS-LY.RIPE.NET.

I'm sure at least the uu.net and uoregon.edu servers are located in the US. Besides, your ISP DNS caches will stay warm for several days.

mgw• 15 years ago

Probably nothing will happen. Nameservers for .ly are dns.lttnet.NET, dns1.lttnet.NET, ns-ly.ripe.NET, auth02.ns.uu.NET, phloem.uoregon.edu. Of these only dns.lttnet.net and dns1.lttnet.net are hosted in Libya. If the dictator will have the local internet shutdown, he probably will not go to the lengths of also clearing all foreign DNS caches listed above.

Nonetheless I would be more careful in selecting a ccTLD to base my business on. Read, for example, about Gaddafi's dealings with Switzerland and you know which laws Libya follows at the moment.

logic• 15 years ago

As of right now, dns and dns1.lttnet.net (in-country) are unreachable, but the out-of-country nameservers are responding with what I presume was their last zone transfer. bit.ly still works, for example, but because of the outage, nic.ly is dead.

Ygor• 15 years ago

Pro: People stop abusing and overusing ccTLDs. (maybe not?)

Con: Many major services go done, which causes a lot of unhappiness and headaches. (does it?)

zyb09• 15 years ago

Don't know about the headaches - more like: okay bit.ly seems to be down, lets use something else.

alphaoverlord• 15 years ago

this article simply poses the question, and does not answer it. waste of 5 minutes. for that, I will not upvote it.

Qz• 15 years ago

This is total.ly missing the point.

jdp232• 15 years ago

The same question showed up on Quora ... no reponse: http://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-to-http-bit-ly-links-w...

dholowiski• 15 years ago

Has anybody asked what happens to .com when the USA turns off their Internet? Having a .com address could be a huge risk to companies in other, more stable countries.

kiujhygthujk• 15 years ago

The same thing that happens when tuvala sinks beneath the waves - nothing.

It's more likely that the US gov might decide that Libya is a terrorist nation and shut down all the .ly addresses for you.

sequoia• 15 years ago

I apologize if I missed something, but I think it's shamefully insensitive of the editors of that site to not even acknowledge that this issue is proportionally irrelevant in light of the fact that peaceful protesters are getting shot to death TO-DAY in Libya.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23924674-liby...

Let's do a thought experiment for a moment and pretend there are some things more significant than web development and e-commerce, shall we?

yes I cross-posted.

EDIT: the author/editor there (Allen Stern) was gracious and considerate in his response to my complaint, and committed to trying to find a way to put the .ly domain issue in perspective in the article. Kudos centernetworks!

rapind• 15 years ago

By the same logic .com domains aren't safe either given the recent ICE shutdowns.

If Libya Shuts Down the Internet, What Happens To .ly Domains?

Related Stories