Another example of the dangers of .ly domain names.
Ever since unrest broke out in Libya Bit.ly has been saying they have no worries about their domain name. They point to the .ly caches outside of Libya. (.ly is the country code domain for Libya.)
But as I’ve pointed out, they should be worried. Just because some of the root nameservers are located outside of Libya doesn’t mean .ly domain names are safe. Libya could decide to simply delete a particular registration. After all, .ly is Libya’s domain name.
Here’s another example that should really scare bit.ly.
TechCrunch is reporting that Letter.ly’s domain name expired, and because of the war it has been unable to renew it.
Why they are unable to renew it is beyond me, but every country code manager handles things differently.
So what happens on those nameservers outside of Libya? They get the message that the domain has expired, and they stop resolving it.
Poof.
Bit.ly expires next year, by the way.
John says
Anyone care to place their bets on .co? lol
Josh says
I would guess that they are a bit (no pun intended) more worried than they are letting on, especially after the problems with the other .ly domains. If they don’t have some sort of contingency plan in place by now, they are risking their business to circumstances beyond their control.
Do you know if they hold any other domains? It seems like it would be a good idea to have a backup site ready on “bit” in another 2-letter extension. Bit.us or bit.co seem like obvious choices.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Josh – owning other domains isn’t a contingency plan. It’s the millions of existing links that would no longer work.
theo says
Maybe the registry waives renewal fees just like Aflias did for the their japanese registrants last week.
Last year i dealt with some .AE domain names. The registrar in question was doing some ramadan and could not be reached. 72 domain names expired it .. But as soon these guys where back in action it was sorted real fast. no downtime at all.. just a worry that the domains where expired .
But how stable .LY is .. we’ll find out. sounds risky to me.
Mark says
They were not able to renew because SoftLayer temporarily shut down Libyan Spider – then restored then after a while. Read more on http://name.ly/~Bd$AM and http://name.ly/~Bd$AV
Mark says
Since Libyan Spider controls the renewal, they will be back short.ly 😉
Mark says
Considering that there is only one registrar in .ly, I urge all .ly holders to renew upfront. Else, the registry is fine, especially considering the situation in the country.
besmart says
ditch the ridiculous vanity extensions and stick with the time-tested .COM/.NET/.ORG. We’ve been given a few warnings now about trouble brewing in the ccTLD’s of certain areas of the world; .LY is not a complete outlier. If you lose your domains after seeing these warning signs, you’ll have no one to blame except yourself.
Gus says
Maybe they will end up using Bitly.pro
Mark says
You may update the article. Libyan Spider is now back to the business. The have just renewed the domain name: Expires: 2012-03-31 00:31:35.
It resolves and works fine. Once again, all .ly owners, including bit.ly should renew as soon as possible. At last for an extra year or two. It should be enough until the dust falls down.
Aaron says
Andrew — HootSuite just announced adding a .li option to their Ht.ly and Ow.ly services:
http://blog.hootsuite.com/li-ly-url-shortener/
Mark says
Shame, but .li does not allow two letters, and .li does not sound that sexy.
Try Brief.ly – they allow you to package many links into one short link.
Mark says
http://brief.ly of course.
Mark says
funny enough, just checked, http://www.htl.li does not resolve, although htl.li does 😉
Freddy says
hi everybody!
I like the Index of Marcovici to measure the quality of some TLD´s: http://domainindex.com/indices/ix/mx
adam9e says
It’s almost 2022 now, The .LY domain is working perfectly without any compliance from the registrant.
In my opinion. LY is a lovely neighbourhood :*
I was searching to buy a .ly domain name, I found https://reg.ly
They are an accredited registrar and they operate from 3 different countries.