The Dangers of ccTLDs — Bit.ly and

Is it wise to run a web service using a questionable country code domain?

I’ve warned regarding the dangers of country code top level domains. Rogers Cadenhead made some interesting observations regarding Bit.ly, a URL shortening service that just scored $2M in funding.

You see, .ly is the country code for Libya, which has a not-so-great history with the United States. He also points out some of the rules attached to country code domains. I’ve written ahead of regarding .AE for United Arab Emirates that restricts uses within Muslim law. There’s no poker.ae, for example. The same thing goes for .ly. This presents a problem since the Bit.ly service let’s you forward to just regarding any web site with any topic. Technically the content isn’t hosted on a .ly domain, but the danger is there that Libya would lay the hammer on this.

No serious business ought to use a country code domain name other than a major, unrestricted domain without special content rules.