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The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

benmetcalfe.com

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Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#21

Post by antileet »

semanticist wrote: post #9

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…

It seems like a fantastic business opportunity for someone inside the country to "represent" the domain owners, and to deal with all the legality, technicality and resolve any conflicts that arise.

Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#22

Post by jacquesm »

semanticist wrote: post #9

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…

> 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.

Agreed, it's their privilege to put the rules up in just their home country language. After all, if you're a foreign entity you will have to abid by the local customs, and part of that is the language.

What's more stinging about this case is that it seems to me that the 'rule change' to limit two letter domains to 'locals only' is arbitrary and was created with the specific idea in mind to recover this domain.

Another red flag for me is that there is apparently plenty of adult content on .ly domains: (NSFW)

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3A.ly+porn

So in all I think he has a point, but the real lesson here is to simply not bother with such domains and register them in a place where you have a fair expectation of respect for your rights and where you can actually read and understand the rules.

If some entity would try to take ww.com away from me you can be assured I'd put up a fight and given that it would be in a jurisdiction that has a legal system that seems to work (for the most part) I'd be fairly confident about the outcome.

If it had been a .ly domain I wouldn't have spent $.10 on it.

Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#23

Post by antileet »

ucentric wrote: post #19
bambax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. If the .com is not available DON'T DO IT! I heard about 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 bu…

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.…

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 was http://del.icio.us When I first saw the product, I thought the name was "icio".

Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#24

Post by thingie »

jacquesm wrote: post #4

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.…

Possibly. I'm not sure if I have more trust in Verisign (which was willing to put wildcard records into .com TLD (a long time ago, yes, but…)) or the local cz.NIC, as an association of czech ISPs and registrars with open policies and membership.

Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#25

Post by semanticist »

antileet wrote: post #21
semanticist wrote: post #9

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…

It seems like a fantastic business opportunity for someone inside the country to "represent" the domain owners, and to deal with all the legality, technicality and resolve any conflicts that arise.

Surely a service like that would have to charge an absolute fortune in order to actually provide that level of support?

Is .ly really such a hot internet property that it's worth all that? It's trendy right now, but that won't last.

Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#26

Post by samstokes »

jacquesm wrote: post #4

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.…

+1. One of my previous companies had a .jo domain (Jordan). One day some Jordanian internet agency had a major outage, and the entire .jo root DNS went offline. We had a 24 hour outage we were completely powerless to resolve. (Maybe we could have dived into the non-authoritative DNS servers and set really long TTLs or something.)

I tried calling up the Jordanian firm that sells cutesy domain puns to Western companies, and after half an hour listening to hold music on an international line, I was told that nobody could talk to me because it was a holiday, and they would look into it tomorrow.

Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#27

Post by semanticist »

davidw wrote: post #18
semanticist wrote: post #9

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…

It's not just people from the US who read English, you know. Here in Europe, you often find people from two different non-English speaking countries conversing in English because it's what they have in common. I think it's ultimately a bit of a caveat emptor situation though: if they're not going to publish their rules in English, it means you're likely to get screwed. Which is to be expected from a dictatorship run…

For the record: I'm not American, and while I don't self-identify as 'European', Scotland/the UK is considered part of Europe.

I know that it's a lingua franca, and that there is a certain expectation that important information online will be in English - but even as someone who only speaks/reads English I think that's an unfair and unreasonable expectation.

Regardless of country, if you can't read and understand the rules/signage, you'd better have a 'native guide' or you're going to do something wrong and not understand how to put things right. That's as true for Libya/.ly as it is for Germany/.de or China/.cn.

Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#28

Post by retube »

rabble wrote: post #11

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/ It's not just Libya, the US govt which has ultimate control over .com, .org, .net, .us, .gov, etc... also has some crazy ideas. Ju…

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...

Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#29

Post by jrockway »

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 :)

Re: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

#30

Post by semanticist »

ucentric wrote: post #19
bambax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. If the .com is not available DON'T DO IT! I heard about 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 bu…

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.…

I totally disagree, based on my experience of using semantici.st for my blog and email.

Especially for personal domains, you're going to want to tell them to people. 'Just email me, my address is whatever at richard dot s d o m a dot in.'

It's a huge chore and confuses people. These things are fine when written down, but become unworkable when you decide to go outside and interact with people. (And I don't mean that in a snarky sense - that's exactly the experience I had. It was fine while I was being reclusive and hiding in my study, but when I realised I needed to interact with other living humans outside, it's a liability.)

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