Hey Bit.ly, What Do you Have to Say Regarding .ly Domains Now?

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 regarding 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 ought to be worried. Just since 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. Following all, .ly is Libya’s domain name.

Here’s another example that ought to really scare bit.ly.

TechCrunch is reporting that Letter.ly’s domain name expired, and since 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.