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If Libya Shuts Down the Internet, What Happens To .ly Domains?
- burgerbrain 16y agoHopefully? Stop abusing country code TLDs already...
- slillibri 16y agoHuh, hopeful.ly isn't registered yet...
- TeMPOraL 16y agoOr 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.
- StavrosK 16y agoWhat 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.
- petercooper 16y agoI 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.
- StavrosK 16y agoThe fact that companies are doing it doesn't mean that customers aren't fazed by it. Sure, 37signals is doing well, but do you think the "hq" part of the basecamp domain helped? When 37signals weren't that well-known and wanted to market it, how many potential customers do you think they lost because people typed "basecamp.com", didn't go where they intended to and never visited again? Customer retention is like trying to plug all the holes in a sieve, and a bad domain is one more hole. Personally, I'd gladly pay $50/yr for a domain if it meant that suddenly the squatters went out of business.
- petercooper 16y agoI can't find fault with your arguments because I'm sure they're true for many cases (and the 'plugging the holes' is entirely valid). That said, my gut feeling is that at least a plurality of people are Googling terms like 'basecamp' rather than typing them in as URLs. And I doubt that those who do type in URLs are fickle enough to write off the task on one failure. Proving it either way would be laborious (but would make for interesting research). Good catch on my phased/fazed mismatch, btw! ;-)
- StavrosK 16y agoI always try to subtly correct that, it irks me when misspelt :P I'm sure people will google for things (hell, I have the "I'm feeling lucky" shortcut bound to "l" on my browser so I do "l basecamp" and I'm there), but this only works if you're first on Google for your name, which isn't something many companies can boast, and certainly not when they're just starting out, which is the time you want new customers the most...
- timerickson 16y agoI can personally attest to becoming very confused by having the add "hq" to basecamp's address. It took me a very long while to get accustomed to that URL, having to repeatedly google basecamp to find it.
- iwwr 16y ago.ch? We could use a few flags of convenience on the virtual seas.
- Legion 16y 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.
- haploid 16y agoDo 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.
- pwim 16y agoExcept that isn't always simple to do. When a domain name we wanted was taken by a squatter, we tried to get in contact with the owner, but never received any response.
- adolph 16y agoYou'd think that if squatters/scalpers were rational the market would be more efficient. The way things really work I think the domain name business is run by compulsive hoarders.
- StavrosK 16y agoYes, because ten people rushed out when the planet was first created and bought all the land for $10 per acre and are now selling it for 200x that.
- chaosmachine 16y ago"most two-word combinations are taken by squatters" Not true. Spend a few minutes playing with this: http://impossibility.org/ http://impossibility.org/
- StavrosK 16y agoThe fact that that tool even exists is an indication that I'm right. Sure, some combinations exist, but when "wallhat.com" is taken (by a squatter, it seems), I don't have much hope.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mikeleeorg 16y agoWow, nice tool. The stats behind it are interesting too: http://blamcast.net/articles/domain-name-generator http://blamcast.net/articles/domain-name-generator
- guelo 16y agoThere'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 16y agoIt'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.
- metachris 16y agoWould you mind sharing that script?
- timerickson 16y agoPlease publish this script! Or, throw up a site and let us add our email to a newsletter list :)
- StavrosK 16y agoThat's interesting, where did you get a list of all the expiration dates?
- ericflo 16y agoJust make up a word, that's what we did.
- StavrosK 16y agoYep, that seems to be the best course of action. I'm bad at randomness, but I'm good at whipping up a simple markov-chain-based domain name generator in a few hours. I'll train it on an English dictionary and they'll sound good as well!
- mkramlich 16y agoAnd 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.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- gambler 16y agoIf 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 16y agothey go away.
- jdp23 16y agowell-summarized :-)
- atgm 16y agoWhy do people use .ly anyway? It's not like there aren't other two-letter domains out there.
- endtime 16y agoProbably 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.
- burgerbrain 16y agoIt'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".
- timerickson 16y agoIt'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.
- burgerbrain 16y agoTo this day I have to doublecheck myself on where the '.'s are places in "del.icio.us" (in fact, it abandoning this URL some time ago). Now, "amazon.com"? Absolutely no worries there.
- carlygeehr 16y agobecause 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 16y agoIt'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 16y agoThe schadenfreude is strong in this thread.
- guelo 16y agoI 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.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mgw 16y agoProbably 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 16y agoAs 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 16y agoPro: 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 16y agoDon't know about the headaches - more like: okay bit.ly seems to be down, lets use something else.
- alphaoverlord 16y agothis article simply poses the question, and does not answer it. waste of 5 minutes. for that, I will not upvote it.
- Qz 16y agoThis is total.ly missing the point.
- jdp23 16y agoThe same question showed up on Quora ... no reponse: http://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-to-http-bit-ly-links-when-Gaddafi-shuts-down-the-Internet-in-Libya-due-to-protests?q=If+Libya+Shuts+Down+the+Internehat+Happens+To+.ly+Domains%3F http://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-to-http-bit-ly-links-w...
- dholowiski 16y agoHas 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 16y agoThe 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 16y agoI 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-libya-troops-shoot-24-dead-as-protesters-march-in-five-cities.do 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 16y agoBy the same logic .com domains aren't safe either given the recent ICE shutdowns.