23 ms·

The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

287 points by gmurphy 16y ago

jff 16y ago
Cutesy domain names considered harmful. As somebody pointed out earlier in the thread, del.icio.us was really a terrible name. When you try to say it out loud (or even think it in your head) it comes out as "dell dot icky-o dot us"; the whole "oh, that's cute, it spells delicious" is pretty shortlived. delicious.com is way easier to say and looks better. The same thing goes for your personal sites. bob.jon.es sounds pretty stupid when you try to tell somebody "Just go to bob dot jon dot es" or "bob dot j-o-n dot e-s". Just say no to cutesy domain names. bobjones.net, not bob.jon.es; delicious.com, not del.icio.us.
waxman 16y ago
Ask HN: Do you think bit.ly should be worried? Do you think they could feasibly switch to a backup url (like j.mp) without totally killing their service?
- seldo 16y ago
  I don't know if this is common knowledge, but all bit.ly-powered domains are actually mirrors of each other, so http://bit.ly/bdMwyV http://bit.ly/bdMwyV and http://j.mp/bdMwyV http://j.mp/bdMwyV automatically go to the same place. This would make such a switch technically simple, but obviously you'd still break all the old bit.ly-domain links.
pg 16y ago
I think what really happened here is that someone at the Libyan domain authority decided they wanted the name and made up a story in order to seize it. I've heard of other cases of .ly names being confiscated, and for this reason we advise YC startups not to depend on them.
- dotBen 16y ago
  Yes, this is what I think happened too (I'm the original owner of vb.ly and that's my blog post linked above) EDIT: and therefore I do feel Bit.ly need to be worried - perhaps they'll be able to do a deal rather than have their domain removed but clearly something is stirring here thus ".ly domain space to be considered unsafe".
- citricsquid 16y ago
  Does this not apply to all ccTLDs though? My understanding was that the majority of ccTLDs are controlled in a way that they are able to easily "reclaim" any domain they want at any time without breaking any "rules"...
  - oasisbob 16y ago
    I took a quick look at the ToS for my .ch domain (Switzerland), and it seems sane and protective. For a .ch, you're at the mercy of the Swiss court system. Sounds OK to me.
    - greendestiny 16y ago
      Yeah I'm not sure how keen bit.ly would be to transfer over to that TLD.
  - kijeda 16y ago
    Each ccTLD is delegated to a competent operator within the country it is designated. In almost all cases (except some historic ones) this is to an entity with approval of the national government of the country. They in turn set their own regulations on domain eligibility criteria, pricing and so forth. So when you buy a .ME domain, you are subject to the relevant law and regulation of Montenegro, for .CO in Colombia, for .LY in Libya and so forth. If those countries elect to allow registrations outside their borders, that is their choice, but there is no external regulation on how they do that. They are accountable internally to the local Internet community of the country, and the local laws. ICANN, on the other hand, is responsible for regulating many aspects for generic top-level domains (currently TLDs with 3 or more characters, such as .COM, .NET, .INFO).
- claes 16y ago
  Same for Nunames, taking back attractive .nu-domains ten year after registration. ICANN should really act on this.
- borism 16y ago
  any evidence?
  - answerly 16y ago
    I have evidence as this is essentially what happened to us. We purchased .ly variant of our domain name through an authorized Libyan registrar about 10 months ago. It was seized back without explanation a few days later. When I contacted the registrar I was told that the domain was available for "four figures" through domains.ly (an aftermarket .ly reseller service that is operated by the same authorized registrar we used to purchase the domain initially). The domain wasn't critical, so we didn't pursue it any further.
- swombat 16y ago
  Alternative explanation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765420 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765420 "Violet Blue is an adult site".
  - kaerast 16y ago
    Yes, and that's the reason given for this domain name being reclaimed. Drinking alcohol and women showing bare arms are both illegal under Sharia law, and the front page showed Violet Blue drinking beer and showing bare arms. It's difficult for many foreigners to know exactly what is and isn't legal under Sharia law, so it's difficult to know if a domain would be ok or not. However nic.ly are now also warning they don't allow ownership of short .ly domains by foreigners, only Libyan nationals. This sounds to me like they want more money or an excuse to take down domains they simply don't like, but is a real problem if they ever decided they want in on the bit.ly action. The vb.ly site owners keep claiming that the content may be adult but that the domain name isn't. This is a weak argument in my mind, and I believe there's a precedent of domain names registered exclusively for the act of malware propagation being taken down.
    - jonhendry 16y ago
      Sharia law doesn't necessarily enter into it. You can't sell dildos and vibrators in Texas, and it's not because of Sharia law. Hindu activists in India made death threats and stormed theaters because of a film about a lesbian relationship. Sharia law is not the only reason for repressive attitudes toward sex. I mean, really. They're, what, 30-40 years behind the cultural norms of the US, in this case? You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far more likely that it's just cultural. It wasn't that long ago in the US that nothing was open on Sundays.
      - alanh 16y ago
        > You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far more likely that it's just cultural. (emph. added) Because cultural reasons are completely separate from religion? Religion is the only reason people like to tell others what they can and can’t do in private, especially in a democracy like Texas, where it shouldn’t be considered Constitutional to outlaw "dildos and vibrators."
merrick 16y ago
I wouldn't panic yet as a .ly domain owner: "While letters ‘vb’ are quite generic and bear no offensive meaning in themselves, they’re being used as a domain name for an openly admitted ‘adult friendly URL shortener’. Now, had your domain merely been a URL shortener for general uses similar to bit.ly (as you claim) there would have been no problem with it. It is when you promote your site being solely for adult uses, or even state that you are ‘adult friendly’ to promote it that we as a Libyan Registry have an issue." There is definitely some risk, so mitigate it and buy the ly.com variant of a .ly domain to protect against this - much like ad.ly owns adly.com, embed.ly owns embedly.com. Watch what bit.ly does - likely nothing right now. If they get warning like vb.ly says they did, we will hear about it, and then every .ly owner has a problem.
ladon86 16y ago
I have two 3-letter .ly domains. Do you think it's a bad idea to use them for anything serious now?
- donohoe 16y ago
  I suggest having a Plan B.
- atlbeer 16y ago
  Everything in business has a risk associated with it. Domain names are not excluded from that analysis. The risk with .ly domains has been discussed before. This is just evidence that the risk exists and this evidence should be used to recalculate that risk. As mentioned in a similar reply in this thread a Plan B should be considered. Any sufficiently large website or business should have some disaster recovery plans, regardless and this is just another page that needs to be created for that plan What a Plan B for a domain name is? I'm not quite sure but, del.icio.us delicious.com is an example.
donohoe 16y ago
When I was suggesting domain names for the NYTimes short URL this was a major concern. I'm sorry to see it actually happen.
jacquesm 16y ago
And to add to all of that: If you register a local version of any domain, be it .ly or anything else make sure that you understand that domains registered as such are subject to both local laws and the whims of the TLD authority. This is one of the reasons I've always stuck to .com, .net and .org, just registering a .nl domain for example requires me to jump through all kinds of hoops, and is more expensive to boot. If you're registering a cutesy domain name because it worked for del.icio.us please note that they eventually switched to the whole word. If you're doing it because 'there are no good names available' then you need to get a bit more inspiration somewhere, I've found it very easy to come up with domain names up to last week, I can't imagine the situation has changed much since then.
- bambax 16y ago
  Couldn't agree more. If the .com is not available DON'T DO IT! I heard about http://wordoid.com/ http://wordoid.com/ here on HN -- it's a wonderful little webapp that lets you generate domain names that "sound natural" in a select list of languages and that (optionally) contain specific words. In the "more options" you can filter out domains where both .com and .net are unavailable (it would be better to just filter unavailable .coms but it still saves a lot of time).
  - ucentric 16y ago
    I think that this advice only applies to commercial sites. I have several personal domains such as Richard.sDoma.in and Richard.sMyNa.me which are far superior to any .com domain name. Personal users are only just starting to get into having a personal URL to hosting their own id and blog etc. and with over 2 billion internet users and only around 140million registered domains, I think attitudes will change quickly. At least for the personal user.
    - antileet 16y ago
      Despite it being shorter, it seems more awkward to type and sometimes seems more prone to error. Not to mention how it might affect your standing with search engines. Remember when http://delicious.com http://delicious.com was http://del.icio.us http://del.icio.us When I first saw the product, I thought the name was "icio".
borism 16y ago
surprise surprise
- borism 16y ago
  no seriously, what part of Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya you didn't get?
sigzero 16y ago
bit.ly is not gonna like that!
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
semanticist 16y ago
While I'm as against Sharia law as the next privileged westerner/godless heathen, I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really amusing. Why should a country's national ccTLD rules be in English? It's a domain space for that country, not for making convenient short URLs for Americans to use on Twitter. Why would a country run under Sharia law want to allow services like bit.ly and others to use their ccTLD to link to porn and other things they find offensive? Why is there an automatic assumption that ccTLD rules should conform to Western expectations? The only explanation I can think of is that in the back of people's heads is the idea 'it's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'. Apart from not being true any more, I wonder how deeply that sort of thinking affects other interactions online? Or maybe I'm overthinking it all and this guy's just pissed off and ranting because he lost his domain.
- kloncks 16y ago
  I will only comment on your use of the term Sharia law. The term's widely misunderstood, especially after the events in NYC this summer. Just so that you know, Sharia "law" is just six principles: 1. The right to the protection of life. 2. The right to the protection of family. 3. The right to the protection of education. 4. The right to the protection of religion. 5. The right to the protection of property (access to resources). 6. The right to the protection of human dignity. That's it. At its base, eerily similar to the bill of rights. The term "shariah law" is a misnomer, because shariah is not law, but a set of principles. Controversial laws like stoning people or requiring women to be totally covered aren't in the Sharia. Those are custom interpretations by certain sects. That's why say Islamic-based laws in Saudi Arabia are radically different from those in Egypt. Just thought I'd share that. It really irked me this summer when everyone was throwing around arguments against "infecting the constitution with Sharia" even though no one actually knows what Sharia is.
  - MartinCron 16y ago
    Thanks for sharing this, I'll no longer use "Sharia" as a denigrating term, as I probably have in the past.
  - 16y ago
rabble 16y ago
I'm not sure if this is a real change to the nic.ly policy or not. It's tricky. They say it was adult content. While vb.ly might not have had any, it was co-owned by Violet Blue, who while she is many wonderful things, she is not islamic. Violet Blue's Website: http://www.tinynibbles.com/ http://www.tinynibbles.com/ It's not just Libya, the US govt which has ultimate control over .com, .org, .net, .us, .gov, etc... also has some crazy ideas. Just look at how the senate last week wanted to start revoking domain names willy nilly.
- retube 16y ago
  Whether or not adult content was physically hosted by vb.ly or not is really a technicality. If the link results in porn in your browser window...
  - jrockway 16y ago
    I guess they block Google, then?
    - DougWebb 16y ago
      They would probably block google.ly, or at least filter it.
      - logic 16y ago
        You mean http://www.google.com.ly/ http://www.google.com.ly/ ?
    - billpg 16y ago
      Probably.
  - dfox 16y ago
    Well, domain name cannot physically host any meaningful content, for most useful values of 'meaningful content'.
- DougWebb 16y ago
stevefink 16y ago
I still don't get the recent trend of startups branding their businesses around .ly and .io. I suppose it's similar to any "hip" trend, such as gradients and rounded corners, but it always seemed legally risky to me.
- edash 16y ago
  Not to mention .tv. I think many people consider .tv a creation for television and video on the Internet, but it was originally reserved for the island of Tuvalu. For a time, GoDaddy had a popup when you went to register a .tv domain stating that the island of Tuvalu was sinking and may not exist in the future. http://boingboing.net/2009/04/30/godaddy-dont-buy-dot.html http://boingboing.net/2009/04/30/godaddy-dont-buy-dot.html If you believe Wikipedia, however, a move in March of this year by Sedo made .tv a safe investment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tv http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tv
- jfager 16y ago
  Why does .io seem legally risky to you? The British Indian Ocean Territory is currently a British protectorate, and the two countries that otherwise claim the islands are Mauritius and the Seychelles, both of which are peaceful and democratic.
  - limmeau 16y ago
    http://www.nic.io/rules.html http://www.nic.io/rules.html states that you may not host content under a .io domain if it is against the statutory laws of any nation.
dont-kill-me 16y ago
So if someone posts a cartoon picture of muhammad, and shortens it through bit.ly, will Libya pull the domain, and in the process break millions of other shortened URLs? http://bit.ly/cartoon-muhammad http://bit.ly/cartoon-muhammad
- jacquesm 16y ago
  The point here is not if they will, the point is that they can, and that that's why it is silly to even start using a domain like that. You don't put your business' fate in the hands of some third world countries legislation/semi governments whims.
po 16y ago
It should be noted that all vb.ly links still exist but do not function at this time. We have the database intact, and will restore your shortened URLs momentarily with a suitable domain. It's nice that they're doing that but it's essentially worthless. The url's in the database have no value, it's the ones spread all over other people's servers, and the work that went into doing it that have value.
jrockway 16y ago
This is what your firewall is for. If the IP is from Libya, send the packets to the web server that hosts the "Libya is excellent!" page. If it's from the country that your users are in, show them the real content. Technical solutions to social problems sometimes work :)
- borism 16y ago
  of course Libya is a mythical country behind mountains higher than Himalayas and has no diplomatic missions anywhere in the world nor are it's officials able to travel let alone Google "violet blue".
joyous 16y ago
You can shove your URL shorteners http://ana.ly/ http://ana.ly/
- afed3 16y ago
  Thanks, reporting that one too.
vital101 16y ago
In Short: This made me chuckle.
ErrantX 16y ago
Culture clash... looking at the sites screenshot here: http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official-vb-ly-link-shortener-seized-by-libyan-government.html http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official-vb-... (NSFW) I can see how under strict Islamic law that pic would be construed as "obscene, offensive and illegal". I have... minimal sympathy with these people - a lot of the fault lies with themselves for not understanding the rules, morals and society of the country they were buying from. I don't think that this generally makes .ly domains any more "unsafe". (on the other hand; if this is an example of Libya deliberately creating rules to seize domains that is another matter, but at least in this case the complaint seems "legitimate" so we may have to wait and see)
- slantyyz 16y ago
  Excellent point. It shouldn't be news to anyone that Libya isn't a free western democracy. I had thought about registering a .ly domain for a webapp, and the thing that stopped me was do I really want to have a domain associated with Libya? And that was before I asked myself how bad the dispute resolution process would be.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  That link is NSFW.
  - darklajid 16y ago
    Just to add some more amusement: Why the hell would that be not safe for work? It's hard to state my question without ending up being dismissed as a troll, but I'm deeply amused by different viewpoints related to sex between western cultures. If I take a karma hit for that, so be it. Anecdote: During the football (yeah, or soccer..) worldcup in Germany images were all over the internet that showed a brochure, which was rumored to be issued by the USA's department of foreign affairs for tourists joining the event. One interesting "fact" about the german culture mentioned in there was ,that violence (on tv, online, etc) might be far less accepted over here and might be felt offensive, while nudity/references to sex might offend the traveller. I never found out if these things were real, but comments like these remind me of some interesting differences in cultures between states that otherwise often end up being regarded similar in morale and grouped as "western countries".
zumda 16y ago
I don't understand why he is so upset about the rule that three letter domain names are blocked. He should move to Switzerland, here you can't register domain names shorter than 3 letters.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  You can, actually. Just not in the .ch TLD.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
afed3 16y ago
I've reported bit.ly to Libya, hopefully it'll be taken offline soon.
andreross 16y ago
All the Lybians did now was scare American and other Western entrepreneurs from getting anywhere near their domain. I was about to have my new startup set up with .ly domain, but now I will move to a much friendlier .it domain (in fact, I would stay away from any Muslim country domain, just in case, including .io). Those who say "oh, we don't own the Internet, how arrogant of us to even think we do..." I want to tell you one thing - yes, you can shove those Sharia countries domains to http://ana.ly http://ana.ly. We do OWN the internet, because it is us who create the Internet. This Lybian Alshariff, or whatever his name is, thinks that because his government thinks that those domains are valuable THATS a reason good enough to confiscate and block them from our use. Ok, fine, do it, moron. The only problem is – once you do something as stupid as this you scare all the people AWAY from your domains, making them literally worthless. When they will realize it it will be too late – once scared people of business do not come back.
- techsupporter 16y ago
  Not to let facts get in the way of a good rant: "I would stay away from any Muslim country domain, just in case, including .io" Are you aware that .io is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory, which is "an overseas territory of the United Kingtom?" The registry itself is maintained by two UK-based companies, Internet Computer Bureau PLC and Cable and Wireless.
  - andreross 16y ago
    oooops, I spent my life being convinced that .io is Indonesia...thanks for clarification, will put that one back on the white list.
    - ars 16y ago
      Indonesia is .id
      - metageek 16y ago
        And America is .ego.
bjonathan 16y ago
Site is down, you can read the article with Bing's cache: http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.com%2fblog%2f2010%2f10%2fthe-ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe%2f&d=879317483757&mkt=fr-FR&setlang=fr-FR&w=38a5245,e3cc4722 http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.co...
efutch 16y ago
HN should register under the .hn domain
adelevie 16y ago
What would happen to Twitter if Bit.ly got disrupted?
- Kilimanjaro 16y ago
  REPLACE 'bit.ly' with 'tw.it' WHERE tweet CONTAINS 'bit.ly' or something like that
ig1 16y ago
It's slightly funny how lots of Americans are complaining about Libya's rules for .ly, but have obviously never read the rules for .us which are in many aspects worse.
FraaJad 16y ago
I would like to draw attention to the fact that US had economic embargo on Libya till 2004(?) and even today there are many items that cannot be exported to Libya. So, when your government (assuming the entrepreneur in question is American) classifies Libya as a dangerous state, it might be prudent to avoid building your identity over the domain names provided by Libya... don't you think. I remember this only because Oracle made me click a check box agreeing not to export any of their software to these "axis of evil" countries.
andybak 16y ago
Am I the only person hoping that a high profile URL shortener liky bit.ly get taken offline so people learn quickly that redirecting their content's URLs through a 3rd party is a bad idea?
- seldo 16y ago
  Redirecting your content through a third party like Amazon Web Services? Or Akamai CDN? Or Rackspace? All small- to medium-size websites are the result of dozens of third party companies -- server farms, network backbones, DNS providers -- working together. Even the really gigantic sites like Google and Yahoo, who really do own their whole networks and all their hardware, use third party services extensively. In the case of a third-party URL shortener, the other party's presence is more visible but no more intrinsically unreliable. And in fact, in this instance, the redirector itself didn't go down -- what "broke" was the DNS provider, namely NIC.ly.
  - ianhawes 16y ago
    You're correct that traditional content is routed through a ton of different companies, and that anyone of them can fail, but using bit.ly is essentially pointless, as it just tacts on another service that must be relied on. In 10 years when bit.ly is completely dead, 2/3rds of the tweets or other comments on the web will be rendered useless.
    - seldo 16y ago
      People complain about this a lot, but the rate of link-rot of ordinary URLs is much, much greater than people believe. I run a URL shortener, and I can assure you that while all of our links still work, huge numbers of the pages they point to no longer exist. The problem is also overstated because nearly all URL shorteners (bit.ly included) are sending HTTP 301 responses. This means that the short link is never indexed; only the original link is. So shorteners have no effect on pagerank/search results, which is where the longevity of pages is important (since anything not published in the very recent past is mostly discovered by search).
    - 16y ago
grandalf 16y ago
I made an adult themed URL shortener pr0n.ly and they ended up canceling the registration b/c it violated islamic law. They said that the problem was the domain name, though, not the content, and issued me age.ly instead (which I still haven't re-branded)
njharman 16y ago
> it sets a precedent that all websites running on a .ly domain must comply with Libyan Islamic/Sharia Given that Libya is a sovereign nation and .ly is their TLD, not a playground for you to create cute domains that seems 110% reasonable.
- jdminhbg 16y ago
  Reasonableness is orthogonal to dangerousness. It's reasonable that playing with a wild grizzly bear might end in serious injury.
  - njharman 16y ago
    Fair enough, and true. I was more responding to the entitled and shocked tone that someone(entity) would act in their self interests even when they, OMG!, conflicted with petty interests of "your" own. I also have a serious twist in my nickers over abusing TLDs to get cutesy domain names. I also have a very serious twist about people who go out of their way to violate custom / abuse a system and then whine about when it doesn't work just they way they want.
jinushaun 16y ago
Finally. I was wondering when somebody was going to crack down on all those .ly domain names. Web 2.0 startups with their cute domain names tend to forget that those TLDs are actually controlled by someone. I remember a while back when Italy started restricting .it domain names because so many Americans were registering .it domain names. Funny how many on here complain about Libya and their sharia requirement instead.
tlb 16y ago
If you hand a government complete power over a critical resource, and you or your peers don't vote for that government, you will regret it. The historical parallel to oil is not lost on Libya. Before 1850 or so, oil was just a nuisance mineral. When the West developed applications for it, Libya's territory, formerly a desert, was now worth trillions. Oil is now 95% of Libya's exports, and probably 95% of their international power too. Libya's government evolved to defend and exploit natural resources, and they've historically done very un-democratic things to further that goal. So please, don't hand them the keys to your startup.
joshu 16y ago
I'm reasonably sure I predicted this: http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.html http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.html
mmaunder 16y ago
This reminds me of the current Dubai commercial property crisis. During the boom, everyone bought property without asking if there was a legal framework for resolving disputes. Now that there's a bust, investors are finding Dubai's opaque property laws make it very difficult to resolve disputes and get your money out. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibuild.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibui... You bought virtual commercial real-estate in Libya and now you're finding you are subject to local law and bureaucracy. Google's bet on the Greenland TDL with goo.gl is less risky but I'd be interested to see what their lawyers had the local government and ccTLD admins agree to.
devmonk 16y ago
'You may also not know that since June 2010 .ly domains less than 4 characters long may no longer be registered by anyone who isn’t in Libya which suggests there is tension around foreign owned, high-value, short .ly domains.' What about bit.ly? Registrant: bit.ly Jessica McVea 416 West 13th Street New York NY United States Zip/Postal code: 10014 Phone: 6468398575 Domain Name: BIT.LY Created: 2008-05-18 14:50:12 Updated: 2010-03-09 18:25:33 Expired: 2011-05-18 14:50:12 Domain servers in listed order: ns4.p26.dynect.net ns3.p26.dynect.net ns2.p26.dynect.net ns1.p26.dynect.net Domain Status: ACTIVE
ergo98 16y ago
Slightly offtopic, I know, but the use of "contest" in the post confused me. For instance- "Again, while we contest that there was NO pornography or adult material on vb.ly," ... (It is used in that manner several times) That statement is essentially saying that they disagree that there was no pornography, or in essence that they agree that there was. To contest something means to disagree with it.
Figs 16y ago
Why do we even have all these stupid country specific domain extensions? Countries are not permanent entries; they come and go. What happens when a country ceases to exist, gets invaded, has a civil war...? What on earth is the benefit of having dozens and dozens of domain extensions, except to confuse people and force them to pay endless amounts for every possible misspelling of your domain? (Seriously, who the hell thought that a .cm domain extension was a good idea?!)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
oshane 16y ago
http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia-law-on-ly/ http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia-law-o...
ZLOK 16y ago
qoiob.com uses shorter (1 char) and more stylish (symbols) domain names (and also works fine with Tweetdeck and other auto-shortening tools) http://✰.ws/ http://✰.ws/

287 points by gmurphy 16y ago

jff 16y ago

Cutesy domain names considered harmful. As somebody pointed out earlier in the thread, del.icio.us was really a terrible name. When you try to say it out loud (or even think it in your head) it comes out as "dell dot icky-o dot us"; the whole "oh, that's cute, it spells delicious" is pretty shortlived. delicious.com is way easier to say and looks better. The same thing goes for your personal sites. bob.jon.es sounds pretty stupid when you try to tell somebody "Just go to bob dot jon dot es" or "bob dot j-o-n dot e-s". Just say no to cutesy domain names. bobjones.net, not bob.jon.es; delicious.com, not del.icio.us.

waxman 16y ago

Ask HN: Do you think bit.ly should be worried? Do you think they could feasibly switch to a backup url (like j.mp) without totally killing their service?

seldo 16y ago
I don't know if this is common knowledge, but all bit.ly-powered domains are actually mirrors of each other, so http://bit.ly/bdMwyV http://bit.ly/bdMwyV and http://j.mp/bdMwyV http://j.mp/bdMwyV automatically go to the same place. This would make such a switch technically simple, but obviously you'd still break all the old bit.ly-domain links.

pg 16y ago

I think what really happened here is that someone at the Libyan domain authority decided they wanted the name and made up a story in order to seize it. I've heard of other cases of .ly names being confiscated, and for this reason we advise YC startups not to depend on them.

dotBen 16y ago
Yes, this is what I think happened too (I'm the original owner of vb.ly and that's my blog post linked above) EDIT: and therefore I do feel Bit.ly need to be worried - perhaps they'll be able to do a deal rather than have their domain removed but clearly something is stirring here thus ".ly domain space to be considered unsafe".
citricsquid 16y ago
Does this not apply to all ccTLDs though? My understanding was that the majority of ccTLDs are controlled in a way that they are able to easily "reclaim" any domain they want at any time without breaking any "rules"...
- oasisbob 16y ago
  I took a quick look at the ToS for my .ch domain (Switzerland), and it seems sane and protective. For a .ch, you're at the mercy of the Swiss court system. Sounds OK to me.
  - greendestiny 16y ago
    Yeah I'm not sure how keen bit.ly would be to transfer over to that TLD.
- kijeda 16y ago
  Each ccTLD is delegated to a competent operator within the country it is designated. In almost all cases (except some historic ones) this is to an entity with approval of the national government of the country. They in turn set their own regulations on domain eligibility criteria, pricing and so forth. So when you buy a .ME domain, you are subject to the relevant law and regulation of Montenegro, for .CO in Colombia, for .LY in Libya and so forth. If those countries elect to allow registrations outside their borders, that is their choice, but there is no external regulation on how they do that. They are accountable internally to the local Internet community of the country, and the local laws. ICANN, on the other hand, is responsible for regulating many aspects for generic top-level domains (currently TLDs with 3 or more characters, such as .COM, .NET, .INFO).
claes 16y ago
Same for Nunames, taking back attractive .nu-domains ten year after registration. ICANN should really act on this.
borism 16y ago
any evidence?
- answerly 16y ago
  I have evidence as this is essentially what happened to us. We purchased .ly variant of our domain name through an authorized Libyan registrar about 10 months ago. It was seized back without explanation a few days later. When I contacted the registrar I was told that the domain was available for "four figures" through domains.ly (an aftermarket .ly reseller service that is operated by the same authorized registrar we used to purchase the domain initially). The domain wasn't critical, so we didn't pursue it any further.
swombat 16y ago
Alternative explanation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765420 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765420 "Violet Blue is an adult site".
- kaerast 16y ago
  Yes, and that's the reason given for this domain name being reclaimed. Drinking alcohol and women showing bare arms are both illegal under Sharia law, and the front page showed Violet Blue drinking beer and showing bare arms. It's difficult for many foreigners to know exactly what is and isn't legal under Sharia law, so it's difficult to know if a domain would be ok or not. However nic.ly are now also warning they don't allow ownership of short .ly domains by foreigners, only Libyan nationals. This sounds to me like they want more money or an excuse to take down domains they simply don't like, but is a real problem if they ever decided they want in on the bit.ly action. The vb.ly site owners keep claiming that the content may be adult but that the domain name isn't. This is a weak argument in my mind, and I believe there's a precedent of domain names registered exclusively for the act of malware propagation being taken down.
  - jonhendry 16y ago
    Sharia law doesn't necessarily enter into it. You can't sell dildos and vibrators in Texas, and it's not because of Sharia law. Hindu activists in India made death threats and stormed theaters because of a film about a lesbian relationship. Sharia law is not the only reason for repressive attitudes toward sex. I mean, really. They're, what, 30-40 years behind the cultural norms of the US, in this case? You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far more likely that it's just cultural. It wasn't that long ago in the US that nothing was open on Sundays.
    - alanh 16y ago
      > You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far more likely that it's just cultural. (emph. added) Because cultural reasons are completely separate from religion? Religion is the only reason people like to tell others what they can and can’t do in private, especially in a democracy like Texas, where it shouldn’t be considered Constitutional to outlaw "dildos and vibrators."

merrick 16y ago

I wouldn't panic yet as a .ly domain owner: "While letters ‘vb’ are quite generic and bear no offensive meaning in themselves, they’re being used as a domain name for an openly admitted ‘adult friendly URL shortener’. Now, had your domain merely been a URL shortener for general uses similar to bit.ly (as you claim) there would have been no problem with it. It is when you promote your site being solely for adult uses, or even state that you are ‘adult friendly’ to promote it that we as a Libyan Registry have an issue." There is definitely some risk, so mitigate it and buy the ly.com variant of a .ly domain to protect against this - much like ad.ly owns adly.com, embed.ly owns embedly.com. Watch what bit.ly does - likely nothing right now. If they get warning like vb.ly says they did, we will hear about it, and then every .ly owner has a problem.

ladon86 16y ago

I have two 3-letter .ly domains. Do you think it's a bad idea to use them for anything serious now?

donohoe 16y ago
I suggest having a Plan B.
atlbeer 16y ago
Everything in business has a risk associated with it. Domain names are not excluded from that analysis. The risk with .ly domains has been discussed before. This is just evidence that the risk exists and this evidence should be used to recalculate that risk. As mentioned in a similar reply in this thread a Plan B should be considered. Any sufficiently large website or business should have some disaster recovery plans, regardless and this is just another page that needs to be created for that plan What a Plan B for a domain name is? I'm not quite sure but, del.icio.us delicious.com is an example.

donohoe 16y ago

When I was suggesting domain names for the NYTimes short URL this was a major concern. I'm sorry to see it actually happen.

jacquesm 16y ago

And to add to all of that: If you register a local version of any domain, be it .ly or anything else make sure that you understand that domains registered as such are subject to both local laws and the whims of the TLD authority. This is one of the reasons I've always stuck to .com, .net and .org, just registering a .nl domain for example requires me to jump through all kinds of hoops, and is more expensive to boot. If you're registering a cutesy domain name because it worked for del.icio.us please note that they eventually switched to the whole word. If you're doing it because 'there are no good names available' then you need to get a bit more inspiration somewhere, I've found it very easy to come up with domain names up to last week, I can't imagine the situation has changed much since then.

bambax 16y ago
Couldn't agree more. If the .com is not available DON'T DO IT! I heard about http://wordoid.com/ http://wordoid.com/ here on HN -- it's a wonderful little webapp that lets you generate domain names that "sound natural" in a select list of languages and that (optionally) contain specific words. In the "more options" you can filter out domains where both .com and .net are unavailable (it would be better to just filter unavailable .coms but it still saves a lot of time).
- ucentric 16y ago
  I think that this advice only applies to commercial sites. I have several personal domains such as Richard.sDoma.in and Richard.sMyNa.me which are far superior to any .com domain name. Personal users are only just starting to get into having a personal URL to hosting their own id and blog etc. and with over 2 billion internet users and only around 140million registered domains, I think attitudes will change quickly. At least for the personal user.
  - antileet 16y ago
    Despite it being shorter, it seems more awkward to type and sometimes seems more prone to error. Not to mention how it might affect your standing with search engines. Remember when http://delicious.com http://delicious.com was http://del.icio.us http://del.icio.us When I first saw the product, I thought the name was "icio".

borism 16y ago

surprise surprise

borism 16y ago
no seriously, what part of Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya you didn't get?

sigzero 16y ago

bit.ly is not gonna like that!

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

semanticist 16y ago

While I'm as against Sharia law as the next privileged westerner/godless heathen, I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really amusing. Why should a country's national ccTLD rules be in English? It's a domain space for that country, not for making convenient short URLs for Americans to use on Twitter. Why would a country run under Sharia law want to allow services like bit.ly and others to use their ccTLD to link to porn and other things they find offensive? Why is there an automatic assumption that ccTLD rules should conform to Western expectations? The only explanation I can think of is that in the back of people's heads is the idea 'it's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'. Apart from not being true any more, I wonder how deeply that sort of thinking affects other interactions online? Or maybe I'm overthinking it all and this guy's just pissed off and ranting because he lost his domain.

kloncks 16y ago
I will only comment on your use of the term Sharia law. The term's widely misunderstood, especially after the events in NYC this summer. Just so that you know, Sharia "law" is just six principles: 1. The right to the protection of life. 2. The right to the protection of family. 3. The right to the protection of education. 4. The right to the protection of religion. 5. The right to the protection of property (access to resources). 6. The right to the protection of human dignity. That's it. At its base, eerily similar to the bill of rights. The term "shariah law" is a misnomer, because shariah is not law, but a set of principles. Controversial laws like stoning people or requiring women to be totally covered aren't in the Sharia. Those are custom interpretations by certain sects. That's why say Islamic-based laws in Saudi Arabia are radically different from those in Egypt. Just thought I'd share that. It really irked me this summer when everyone was throwing around arguments against "infecting the constitution with Sharia" even though no one actually knows what Sharia is.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  Thanks for sharing this, I'll no longer use "Sharia" as a denigrating term, as I probably have in the past.
- 16y ago

rabble 16y ago

I'm not sure if this is a real change to the nic.ly policy or not. It's tricky. They say it was adult content. While vb.ly might not have had any, it was co-owned by Violet Blue, who while she is many wonderful things, she is not islamic. Violet Blue's Website: http://www.tinynibbles.com/ http://www.tinynibbles.com/ It's not just Libya, the US govt which has ultimate control over .com, .org, .net, .us, .gov, etc... also has some crazy ideas. Just look at how the senate last week wanted to start revoking domain names willy nilly.

retube 16y ago
Whether or not adult content was physically hosted by vb.ly or not is really a technicality. If the link results in porn in your browser window...
- jrockway 16y ago
  I guess they block Google, then?
  - DougWebb 16y ago
    They would probably block google.ly, or at least filter it.
    - logic 16y ago
      You mean http://www.google.com.ly/ http://www.google.com.ly/ ?
  - billpg 16y ago
    Probably.
- dfox 16y ago
  Well, domain name cannot physically host any meaningful content, for most useful values of 'meaningful content'.
DougWebb 16y ago

stevefink 16y ago

I still don't get the recent trend of startups branding their businesses around .ly and .io. I suppose it's similar to any "hip" trend, such as gradients and rounded corners, but it always seemed legally risky to me.

edash 16y ago
Not to mention .tv. I think many people consider .tv a creation for television and video on the Internet, but it was originally reserved for the island of Tuvalu. For a time, GoDaddy had a popup when you went to register a .tv domain stating that the island of Tuvalu was sinking and may not exist in the future. http://boingboing.net/2009/04/30/godaddy-dont-buy-dot.html http://boingboing.net/2009/04/30/godaddy-dont-buy-dot.html If you believe Wikipedia, however, a move in March of this year by Sedo made .tv a safe investment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tv http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.tv
jfager 16y ago
Why does .io seem legally risky to you? The British Indian Ocean Territory is currently a British protectorate, and the two countries that otherwise claim the islands are Mauritius and the Seychelles, both of which are peaceful and democratic.
- limmeau 16y ago
  http://www.nic.io/rules.html http://www.nic.io/rules.html states that you may not host content under a .io domain if it is against the statutory laws of any nation.

dont-kill-me 16y ago

So if someone posts a cartoon picture of muhammad, and shortens it through bit.ly, will Libya pull the domain, and in the process break millions of other shortened URLs? http://bit.ly/cartoon-muhammad http://bit.ly/cartoon-muhammad

jacquesm 16y ago
The point here is not if they will, the point is that they can, and that that's why it is silly to even start using a domain like that. You don't put your business' fate in the hands of some third world countries legislation/semi governments whims.

po 16y ago

It should be noted that all vb.ly links still exist but do not function at this time. We have the database intact, and will restore your shortened URLs momentarily with a suitable domain. It's nice that they're doing that but it's essentially worthless. The url's in the database have no value, it's the ones spread all over other people's servers, and the work that went into doing it that have value.

jrockway 16y ago

This is what your firewall is for. If the IP is from Libya, send the packets to the web server that hosts the "Libya is excellent!" page. If it's from the country that your users are in, show them the real content. Technical solutions to social problems sometimes work :)

borism 16y ago
of course Libya is a mythical country behind mountains higher than Himalayas and has no diplomatic missions anywhere in the world nor are it's officials able to travel let alone Google "violet blue".

joyous 16y ago

You can shove your URL shorteners http://ana.ly/ http://ana.ly/

afed3 16y ago
Thanks, reporting that one too.

vital101 16y ago

In Short: This made me chuckle.

ErrantX 16y ago

Culture clash... looking at the sites screenshot here: http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official-vb-ly-link-shortener-seized-by-libyan-government.html http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official-vb-... (NSFW) I can see how under strict Islamic law that pic would be construed as "obscene, offensive and illegal". I have... minimal sympathy with these people - a lot of the fault lies with themselves for not understanding the rules, morals and society of the country they were buying from. I don't think that this generally makes .ly domains any more "unsafe". (on the other hand; if this is an example of Libya deliberately creating rules to seize domains that is another matter, but at least in this case the complaint seems "legitimate" so we may have to wait and see)

slantyyz 16y ago
Excellent point. It shouldn't be news to anyone that Libya isn't a free western democracy. I had thought about registering a .ly domain for a webapp, and the thing that stopped me was do I really want to have a domain associated with Libya? And that was before I asked myself how bad the dispute resolution process would be.
jacquesm 16y ago
That link is NSFW.
- darklajid 16y ago
  Just to add some more amusement: Why the hell would that be not safe for work? It's hard to state my question without ending up being dismissed as a troll, but I'm deeply amused by different viewpoints related to sex between western cultures. If I take a karma hit for that, so be it. Anecdote: During the football (yeah, or soccer..) worldcup in Germany images were all over the internet that showed a brochure, which was rumored to be issued by the USA's department of foreign affairs for tourists joining the event. One interesting "fact" about the german culture mentioned in there was ,that violence (on tv, online, etc) might be far less accepted over here and might be felt offensive, while nudity/references to sex might offend the traveller. I never found out if these things were real, but comments like these remind me of some interesting differences in cultures between states that otherwise often end up being regarded similar in morale and grouped as "western countries".

zumda 16y ago

I don't understand why he is so upset about the rule that three letter domain names are blocked. He should move to Switzerland, here you can't register domain names shorter than 3 letters.

jacquesm 16y ago
You can, actually. Just not in the .ch TLD.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

afed3 16y ago

I've reported bit.ly to Libya, hopefully it'll be taken offline soon.

andreross 16y ago

All the Lybians did now was scare American and other Western entrepreneurs from getting anywhere near their domain. I was about to have my new startup set up with .ly domain, but now I will move to a much friendlier .it domain (in fact, I would stay away from any Muslim country domain, just in case, including .io). Those who say "oh, we don't own the Internet, how arrogant of us to even think we do..." I want to tell you one thing - yes, you can shove those Sharia countries domains to http://ana.ly http://ana.ly. We do OWN the internet, because it is us who create the Internet. This Lybian Alshariff, or whatever his name is, thinks that because his government thinks that those domains are valuable THATS a reason good enough to confiscate and block them from our use. Ok, fine, do it, moron. The only problem is – once you do something as stupid as this you scare all the people AWAY from your domains, making them literally worthless. When they will realize it it will be too late – once scared people of business do not come back.

techsupporter 16y ago
Not to let facts get in the way of a good rant: "I would stay away from any Muslim country domain, just in case, including .io" Are you aware that .io is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory, which is "an overseas territory of the United Kingtom?" The registry itself is maintained by two UK-based companies, Internet Computer Bureau PLC and Cable and Wireless.
- andreross 16y ago
  oooops, I spent my life being convinced that .io is Indonesia...thanks for clarification, will put that one back on the white list.
  - ars 16y ago
    Indonesia is .id
    - metageek 16y ago
      And America is .ego.

bjonathan 16y ago

Site is down, you can read the article with Bing's cache: http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.com%2fblog%2f2010%2f10%2fthe-ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe%2f&d=879317483757&mkt=fr-FR&setlang=fr-FR&w=38a5245,e3cc4722 http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.co...

efutch 16y ago

HN should register under the .hn domain

adelevie 16y ago

What would happen to Twitter if Bit.ly got disrupted?

Kilimanjaro 16y ago
REPLACE 'bit.ly' with 'tw.it' WHERE tweet CONTAINS 'bit.ly' or something like that

ig1 16y ago

It's slightly funny how lots of Americans are complaining about Libya's rules for .ly, but have obviously never read the rules for .us which are in many aspects worse.

FraaJad 16y ago

I would like to draw attention to the fact that US had economic embargo on Libya till 2004(?) and even today there are many items that cannot be exported to Libya. So, when your government (assuming the entrepreneur in question is American) classifies Libya as a dangerous state, it might be prudent to avoid building your identity over the domain names provided by Libya... don't you think. I remember this only because Oracle made me click a check box agreeing not to export any of their software to these "axis of evil" countries.

andybak 16y ago

Am I the only person hoping that a high profile URL shortener liky bit.ly get taken offline so people learn quickly that redirecting their content's URLs through a 3rd party is a bad idea?

seldo 16y ago
Redirecting your content through a third party like Amazon Web Services? Or Akamai CDN? Or Rackspace? All small- to medium-size websites are the result of dozens of third party companies -- server farms, network backbones, DNS providers -- working together. Even the really gigantic sites like Google and Yahoo, who really do own their whole networks and all their hardware, use third party services extensively. In the case of a third-party URL shortener, the other party's presence is more visible but no more intrinsically unreliable. And in fact, in this instance, the redirector itself didn't go down -- what "broke" was the DNS provider, namely NIC.ly.
- ianhawes 16y ago
  You're correct that traditional content is routed through a ton of different companies, and that anyone of them can fail, but using bit.ly is essentially pointless, as it just tacts on another service that must be relied on. In 10 years when bit.ly is completely dead, 2/3rds of the tweets or other comments on the web will be rendered useless.
  - seldo 16y ago
    People complain about this a lot, but the rate of link-rot of ordinary URLs is much, much greater than people believe. I run a URL shortener, and I can assure you that while all of our links still work, huge numbers of the pages they point to no longer exist. The problem is also overstated because nearly all URL shorteners (bit.ly included) are sending HTTP 301 responses. This means that the short link is never indexed; only the original link is. So shorteners have no effect on pagerank/search results, which is where the longevity of pages is important (since anything not published in the very recent past is mostly discovered by search).
  - 16y ago

grandalf 16y ago

I made an adult themed URL shortener pr0n.ly and they ended up canceling the registration b/c it violated islamic law. They said that the problem was the domain name, though, not the content, and issued me age.ly instead (which I still haven't re-branded)

njharman 16y ago

> it sets a precedent that all websites running on a .ly domain must comply with Libyan Islamic/Sharia Given that Libya is a sovereign nation and .ly is their TLD, not a playground for you to create cute domains that seems 110% reasonable.

jdminhbg 16y ago
Reasonableness is orthogonal to dangerousness. It's reasonable that playing with a wild grizzly bear might end in serious injury.
- njharman 16y ago
  Fair enough, and true. I was more responding to the entitled and shocked tone that someone(entity) would act in their self interests even when they, OMG!, conflicted with petty interests of "your" own. I also have a serious twist in my nickers over abusing TLDs to get cutesy domain names. I also have a very serious twist about people who go out of their way to violate custom / abuse a system and then whine about when it doesn't work just they way they want.

jinushaun 16y ago

Finally. I was wondering when somebody was going to crack down on all those .ly domain names. Web 2.0 startups with their cute domain names tend to forget that those TLDs are actually controlled by someone. I remember a while back when Italy started restricting .it domain names because so many Americans were registering .it domain names. Funny how many on here complain about Libya and their sharia requirement instead.

tlb 16y ago

If you hand a government complete power over a critical resource, and you or your peers don't vote for that government, you will regret it. The historical parallel to oil is not lost on Libya. Before 1850 or so, oil was just a nuisance mineral. When the West developed applications for it, Libya's territory, formerly a desert, was now worth trillions. Oil is now 95% of Libya's exports, and probably 95% of their international power too. Libya's government evolved to defend and exploit natural resources, and they've historically done very un-democratic things to further that goal. So please, don't hand them the keys to your startup.

joshu 16y ago

I'm reasonably sure I predicted this: http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.html http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-url-shorteners.html

mmaunder 16y ago

This reminds me of the current Dubai commercial property crisis. During the boom, everyone bought property without asking if there was a legal framework for resolving disputes. Now that there's a bust, investors are finding Dubai's opaque property laws make it very difficult to resolve disputes and get your money out. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibuild.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibui... You bought virtual commercial real-estate in Libya and now you're finding you are subject to local law and bureaucracy. Google's bet on the Greenland TDL with goo.gl is less risky but I'd be interested to see what their lawyers had the local government and ccTLD admins agree to.

devmonk 16y ago

'You may also not know that since June 2010 .ly domains less than 4 characters long may no longer be registered by anyone who isn’t in Libya which suggests there is tension around foreign owned, high-value, short .ly domains.' What about bit.ly? Registrant: bit.ly Jessica McVea 416 West 13th Street New York NY United States Zip/Postal code: 10014 Phone: 6468398575 Domain Name: BIT.LY Created: 2008-05-18 14:50:12 Updated: 2010-03-09 18:25:33 Expired: 2011-05-18 14:50:12 Domain servers in listed order: ns4.p26.dynect.net ns3.p26.dynect.net ns2.p26.dynect.net ns1.p26.dynect.net Domain Status: ACTIVE

ergo98 16y ago

Slightly offtopic, I know, but the use of "contest" in the post confused me. For instance- "Again, while we contest that there was NO pornography or adult material on vb.ly," ... (It is used in that manner several times) That statement is essentially saying that they disagree that there was no pornography, or in essence that they agree that there was. To contest something means to disagree with it.

Figs 16y ago

Why do we even have all these stupid country specific domain extensions? Countries are not permanent entries; they come and go. What happens when a country ceases to exist, gets invaded, has a civil war...? What on earth is the benefit of having dozens and dozens of domain extensions, except to confuse people and force them to pay endless amounts for every possible misspelling of your domain? (Seriously, who the hell thought that a .cm domain extension was a good idea?!)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

oshane 16y ago

http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia-law-on-ly/ http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia-law-o...

ZLOK 16y ago

qoiob.com uses shorter (1 char) and more stylish (symbols) domain names (and also works fine with Tweetdeck and other auto-shortening tools) http://✰.ws/ http://✰.ws/