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Why investing in bit.ly last week was a bad idea

aaronpigeon.com

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Re: Why investing in bit.ly last week was a bad idea

#21

Post by dualboot »

aresant wrote: post #16

Is it really a story that an Islamic nation would shut down a pornographer? That seems like that is a foregone conclusion, whereas bit.ly is an incredibly visible, legitimate service. Libya has had a tumultuous few decades, but today they're in the United Nations Security Council, have paid reparations for terrorism, and their president is the Chairman of the African Union. Why would they destroy a partnership with t…

No, the story is that they can shut down a domain name and there is no appeal that can be filed.

You exist at the whim of the dictator.

To further provide fuel for the fire the author cites and example of them shutting down another URL shortening service because it was being used to link pornography. Something I'm sure Bit.ly is often used for as well.

Re: Why investing in bit.ly last week was a bad idea

#23

Post by ryanwaggoner »

bigiain wrote: post #20
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the difficult part is changing all those links all over the web; after all, bit.ly still has the metadata and could setup a new domain for it in a few hours. The problem is getting hundreds of thousands (or millions) of sites to change all those links. And what's worse is that Libya wouldn't even have to break the functionality; they could just introduce spam, ads, phishing, malware, etc. along the way. Bit.ly…

Oh, and "fixing it in the DNS or browser" is just wrong wrong wrong. Are you _really_ suggesting that IANA or Microsoft/Mozilla/Apple/Google ought to be allowed to "hijack" some of Libya's .ly domain space, just to prop up the flawed business model of some dipshit little company ??? That way lies madness...

We already do spam and malware filtering at both of those levels...how is this different? I'm not saying that seizure alone would be enough to intervene at these levels, but if Libya decided to hijack these links for nefarious purposes, then yeah, I don't have a problem with it.

Re: Why investing in bit.ly last week was a bad idea

#25

Post by brownleej »

dkasper wrote: post #5

What's the point in putting domain names under the control of a country these days anyway? I understand that Lybia or some organization therein collects a fee from people registering .ly domains, but it would certainly be possible to still pay them the fee without giving them the power to "turn off" domain names without cause. They could even retain the right to refuse to sell domains to people, but once you've bough…

As I understand it, one does not typically buy domains, but rather leases them. Your analogy to other kinds of property thus does not apply to domains.

Re: Why investing in bit.ly last week was a bad idea

#26

Post by jrockway »

tptacek wrote: post #11
dkasper wrote: post #5

What's the point in putting domain names under the control of a country these days anyway? I understand that Lybia or some organization therein collects a fee from people registering .ly domains, but it would certainly be possible to still pay them the fee without giving them the power to "turn off" domain names without cause. They could even retain the right to refuse to sell domains to people, but once you've bough…

The ISO country code domains aren't a public good; they're allocated to their respective countries, to use as they wish. Libya is within its rights not to allocate any domain names at all. Conceptually within the DNS, there is no difference between APPLE.COM. and LY. You wouldn't expect Apple to allow random people to set up names under APPLE.COM. John Postel oversaw a decision, multiple decades ago, to allocate coun…

Actually, APPLE.COM. and LY. are different. You get the address of the LY. server from a public root nameserver; servers set up solely to provide a starting point for "the Internet". You only find APPLE.COM. because you look in COM. first.

When you choose to use the root nameserver, you are assuming they are making good decisions about who to delegate to. When COM. delegates to Apple's servers for APPLE.COM., that's a good decision. When the root nameserver delegates to the current LY. servers, that's a bad decision, because LY. does not hold up their end of the bargain and properly delegate. VB.LY. should delegate to VB.LY.'s servers. But for some reason, they refuse to do it. So the root server should simply not delegate to it.

Incidentally, nobody is forcing anyone to use "the" root nameservers. If you want vb.ly back, just use a different root!

Re: Why investing in bit.ly last week was a bad idea

#27

Post by pbhjpbhj »

tptacek wrote: post #11
dkasper wrote: post #5

What's the point in putting domain names under the control of a country these days anyway? I understand that Lybia or some organization therein collects a fee from people registering .ly domains, but it would certainly be possible to still pay them the fee without giving them the power to "turn off" domain names without cause. They could even retain the right to refuse to sell domains to people, but once you've bough…

The ISO country code domains aren't a public good; they're allocated to their respective countries, to use as they wish. Libya is within its rights not to allocate any domain names at all. Conceptually within the DNS, there is no difference between APPLE.COM. and LY. You wouldn't expect Apple to allow random people to set up names under APPLE.COM. John Postel oversaw a decision, multiple decades ago, to allocate coun…

>the fault lies in people willing to do business with a manifestly evil country for the sake of a vanity domain

Regimes may be largely evil but I don't think a country can be.

Re: Why investing in bit.ly last week was a bad idea

#28

Post by tptacek »

jrockway wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ISO country code domains aren't a public good; they're allocated to their respective countries, to use as they wish. Libya is within its rights not to allocate any domain names at all. Conceptually within the DNS, there is no difference between APPLE.COM. and LY. You wouldn't expect Apple to allow random people to set up names under APPLE.COM. John Postel oversaw a decision, multiple decades ago, to allocate coun…

Actually, APPLE.COM. and LY. are different. You get the address of the LY. server from a public root nameserver; servers set up solely to provide a starting point for "the Internet". You only find APPLE.COM. because you look in COM. first. When you choose to use the root nameserver, you are assuming they are making good decisions about who to delegate to. When COM. delegates to Apple's servers for APPLE.COM., that's…

What's the bargain Libya struck up with the IETF/IANA regarding delegations under .LY?

Re: Why investing in bit.ly last week was a bad idea

#29

Post by SkyMarshal »

tptacek wrote: post #14
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter if most of the links being generated are still at bit.ly. The issue isn't switching to a new domain after the fact; bit.ly has all the data for all those links and could setup a new domain right away, but all the old bit.ly links are still embedded all across the web. Getting those changed is the hard part.

Or, Libya could go crazy, decide to fuck with the rest of the world, and have every bit.ly link redirect somewhere that will blow up IE, Firefox, Flash, Quicktime, and Reader. Crazy-er, I mean.

Out of curiosity, is there any kind of list the risks various TLDs pose to businesses? Something similar to the US State Department travel warning list, for example (but including the US too)?

I ask b/c I recently bought a .co domain for a side project which will depend heavily on the domain similar to bit.ly, and my surface impression is that Columbia is stable enough for TLD risk not to be an issue. But there is the FARC, drug cartels, and probabaly some unknown unknowns as well, and this .ly issue is making me wonder if I should reconsider before irreversibly locking in this domain.

Re: Why investing in bit.ly last week was a bad idea

#30

Post by jrockway »

tptacek wrote: post #28
jrockway wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, APPLE.COM. and LY. are different. You get the address of the LY. server from a public root nameserver; servers set up solely to provide a starting point for "the Internet". You only find APPLE.COM. because you look in COM. first. When you choose to use the root nameserver, you are assuming they are making good decisions about who to delegate to. When COM. delegates to Apple's servers for APPLE.COM., that's…

What's the bargain Libya struck up with the IETF/IANA regarding delegations under .LY?

Maintaining records so that delegation to the owner of a domain happens. VB.LY owns VB.LY. LY stopped delegating.

This breaks the Internet.

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