5 ms·

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

41 points by petervandijck 16y ago

I got this email from letter.ly: hello letterly authors, 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. 1) sorry for the hassle. it's amazing that a physical war has affected our service in this way. 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. if you have questions / comments / concerns, i am happy to address them. peace. - adam

edw 16y ago
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?!
- yolesaber 16y ago
  What does Colombia have to do with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez?
- alfet 16y ago
  Venezuela -> .ve -> Hugo Chávez Colombia -> .co -> Juan Manuel Santos
  - kylelibra 16y ago
    Are the .ve domains actually available? I tried to get one a while back and found out I couldn't register one.
- asclepiades 16y ago
  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".
  - ascendant 16y ago
    To a degree you're right, but it's a valid concern. Do you want to trust the gateway to your business to a country and by extension, a government you feel is either unstable or will do your company harm because they don't like your government? It's less of a west vs <insert government here> thing and more of an A vs B thing.
  - edw 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      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.
- kilian 16y ago
  I just ordered a .so domain, which is Somalia. I wouldn't trust that country's government with a quarter, but a domain name seems like am okay deal. The site is actually better than the dutch registrar authority's... http://soregistry.so/ http://soregistry.so/
  - gregschlom 16y ago
    > but a domain name seems like am okay deal Yes, until you have half a million customers coming to your site every month, and they suddenly found out that your site "no longer works".
    - jarin 16y ago
      Who knows, if your primary audience keeps up with tech news you might want to do it anyway and keep a press release and backup domain name ready to go in case it does go down. If you're quick enough, you might become the headliner for companies affected by the conflict. You know, going back and re-reading what I just wrote, it sounds pretty bad. I'll leave the moral resolution up to the individual.
- strickjb9 16y ago
  Despite the slip up on the country-leader pairings, you make several valid points. You have to be comfortable with the (small) risk of registering with a country's top level domain.
- curt 16y ago
  Chavez is funding/protecting the Colombian rebels trying to bring down the country... So really edw is right.
- grandalf 16y ago
  I don't think any of us predicted that Obama would go to war with Libya. This is Obama's war taking down .ly domains, and nothing at all to do with unstable regimes.
  - eli 16y ago
    Problems with the Libyan internet began well before the US began active involvement. The .ly ccTLD has nothing to do with Obama and everything to do with unstable regimes.
    - grandalf 16y ago
      What do you mean by problems? There was some censorship, but I have been using bit.ly successfully for years with no trouble whatsoever. The country's institutions (such as libyan spider llc) were all doing just fine until Western powers decided to intervene.
      - eli 16y ago
        This is a silly argument. Egypt's Internet went almost completely dark despite a lack of overt Western involvement.
        grandalf 16y ago
        I think overt is not necessarily all that was going on.
- MatthewPhillips 16y ago
  I wouldn't trust Germany either, unless I'm German. Country code domains are meant for residents of that country. If you're an American use .us, if your Chinese use .cn, if you're Libyan use .ly. Or use .com, .org, .net, .info
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
rianjs 16y ago
I find it amazing that letter.ly finds it amazing that a physical war might disrupt their normal service(s).
- jarin 16y ago
  …to the Cloud!!
  - fizx 16y ago
    Please don't.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- romaniv 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    The DNS for .ly is distributed. The point of failure was the registrar.
    - jarin 16y ago
      Is it possible after registration to transfer your domain to a registrar that isn't accredited for that particular TLD?
    - romaniv 16y ago
      I'm not sure why registrar would not be considered a part of DNS.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
rexreed 16y ago
The DHS / Department of Justice have proven that US domains are not particularly safe or immune from arbitrary shutdown either.
- Klondike 16y ago
  But at the same time, I don't mind giving money to "America" as a whole.
  - gregschlom 16y ago
    It's not about who you give the money to, though that may also be a valid concern, but how you build a reliable business if your site can be taken down for arbitrary reasons at any time.
    - rexreed 16y ago
      Exactly - ask those whose domains were shutdown / confiscated / knocked off the net if they could have ever foreseen that the DHS / DOJ would have or could have taken them down... without even the benefit of due process.
- edanm 16y ago
  "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 16y ago
    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.
hessenwolf 16y ago
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 16y ago
  Why would they block .nr (Nauru) domains? Does a lot of spam/scams originate there?
  - hessenwolf 16y ago
    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
rexreed 16y ago
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.
eli 16y ago
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.
livejamie 16y ago
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=19 http://libyanspider.com/m/announcements.php?id=20 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 16y ago
  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.
erik_p 16y ago
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 16y ago
  "our domain registration expired, and we were unable to renew it."
mbesto 16y ago
What will happen to http://bit.ly 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-if-Gaddafi-shuts-down-the-Internet-in-Libya-due-to-protests http://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-to-http-bit-ly-links-i...
- sjs382 16y ago
  Worst-case scenario: you'll need to install a browser extension to :s/bit.ly/j.mp/g

41 points by petervandijck 16y ago

edw 16y ago

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?!

yolesaber 16y ago
What does Colombia have to do with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez?
alfet 16y ago
Venezuela -> .ve -> Hugo Chávez Colombia -> .co -> Juan Manuel Santos
- kylelibra 16y ago
  Are the .ve domains actually available? I tried to get one a while back and found out I couldn't register one.
asclepiades 16y ago
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".
- ascendant 16y ago
  To a degree you're right, but it's a valid concern. Do you want to trust the gateway to your business to a country and by extension, a government you feel is either unstable or will do your company harm because they don't like your government? It's less of a west vs <insert government here> thing and more of an A vs B thing.
- edw 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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.
kilian 16y ago
I just ordered a .so domain, which is Somalia. I wouldn't trust that country's government with a quarter, but a domain name seems like am okay deal. The site is actually better than the dutch registrar authority's... http://soregistry.so/ http://soregistry.so/
- gregschlom 16y ago
  > but a domain name seems like am okay deal Yes, until you have half a million customers coming to your site every month, and they suddenly found out that your site "no longer works".
  - jarin 16y ago
    Who knows, if your primary audience keeps up with tech news you might want to do it anyway and keep a press release and backup domain name ready to go in case it does go down. If you're quick enough, you might become the headliner for companies affected by the conflict. You know, going back and re-reading what I just wrote, it sounds pretty bad. I'll leave the moral resolution up to the individual.
strickjb9 16y ago
Despite the slip up on the country-leader pairings, you make several valid points. You have to be comfortable with the (small) risk of registering with a country's top level domain.
curt 16y ago
Chavez is funding/protecting the Colombian rebels trying to bring down the country... So really edw is right.
grandalf 16y ago
I don't think any of us predicted that Obama would go to war with Libya. This is Obama's war taking down .ly domains, and nothing at all to do with unstable regimes.
- eli 16y ago
  Problems with the Libyan internet began well before the US began active involvement. The .ly ccTLD has nothing to do with Obama and everything to do with unstable regimes.
  - grandalf 16y ago
    What do you mean by problems? There was some censorship, but I have been using bit.ly successfully for years with no trouble whatsoever. The country's institutions (such as libyan spider llc) were all doing just fine until Western powers decided to intervene.
    - eli 16y ago
      This is a silly argument. Egypt's Internet went almost completely dark despite a lack of overt Western involvement.
      - grandalf 16y ago
        I think overt is not necessarily all that was going on.
MatthewPhillips 16y ago
I wouldn't trust Germany either, unless I'm German. Country code domains are meant for residents of that country. If you're an American use .us, if your Chinese use .cn, if you're Libyan use .ly. Or use .com, .org, .net, .info
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

rianjs 16y ago

I find it amazing that letter.ly finds it amazing that a physical war might disrupt their normal service(s).

jarin 16y ago
…to the Cloud!!
- fizx 16y ago
  Please don't.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
romaniv 16y ago
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 16y ago
  The DNS for .ly is distributed. The point of failure was the registrar.
  - jarin 16y ago
    Is it possible after registration to transfer your domain to a registrar that isn't accredited for that particular TLD?
  - romaniv 16y ago
    I'm not sure why registrar would not be considered a part of DNS.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

rexreed 16y ago

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

Klondike 16y ago
But at the same time, I don't mind giving money to "America" as a whole.
- gregschlom 16y ago
  It's not about who you give the money to, though that may also be a valid concern, but how you build a reliable business if your site can be taken down for arbitrary reasons at any time.
  - rexreed 16y ago
    Exactly - ask those whose domains were shutdown / confiscated / knocked off the net if they could have ever foreseen that the DHS / DOJ would have or could have taken them down... without even the benefit of due process.
edanm 16y ago
"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 16y ago
  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.

hessenwolf 16y ago

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 16y ago
Why would they block .nr (Nauru) domains? Does a lot of spam/scams originate there?
- hessenwolf 16y ago
  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

rexreed 16y ago

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.

eli 16y ago

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.

livejamie 16y ago

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=19 http://libyanspider.com/m/announcements.php?id=20 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 16y ago
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.

erik_p 16y ago

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 16y ago
"our domain registration expired, and we were unable to renew it."

mbesto 16y ago

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

sjs382 16y ago
Worst-case scenario: you'll need to install a browser extension to :s/bit.ly/j.mp/g