What does Libyan revolution mean for bit.ly?

DomainWire asks what will happen to the popular bit.ly URL shortener if Libya shuts down its Internet service (.ly is the country code for Libya). Several people have noted that no matter how cute the .ly suffix is to us in a domain name, it is ultimately controlled for a loony dictator, and therefore perhaps not suitable as a piece of global network infrastructure.

But if Libya "shuts down" the internet rather than taking aim at a particular service (and it could take aim at bit.ly given its use to spread news about Libya on Twitter), what happens to anything on the .ly domain name?

We can look to what happened in Egypt for a very recent and relevant answer.

When Egypt stymied the internet the primary servers the ccTLD operators used were inaccessible as they were in Egypt. This meant they couldn't resolve addresses.

In the case of the ASCII .eg domain name there were secondary servers that had cached the primary, meaning .eg domains were still accessible.

Is Bit.ly Toast if Libya Shuts Down the Internet?

(Image: Who's Next..., a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from showmeone's photostream)

• [Sean Bonner]

  This was asked on Quora, and answered by
  John Borthwick, CEO of bit.ly

  http://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-to-http-bit-ly-links-when-Gaddafi-shuts-down-the-Internet-in-Libya-due-to-protests

  He says:

  “Should Libya block Internet traffic, as Egypt did, it will not effect http://bit.ly or any .ly domain.

  For .ly domains to be unresolvable the five .ly root servers that are authoritative *all* have to be offline, or responding with empty responses. Of the five root nameservers for the .ly TLD: two are based in Oregon, one is in the Netherlands and two are in Libya. ”

  So, assuming that’s true, nothing will happen to Bit.ly

• [mbernth]

  Libya has now cut off the internet service and Bit.ly still lives.
  http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9210438/As_violence_escalates_Libya_cuts_off_the_Internet

  Hope it doesn’t stop the protests either.

• [benher]

  Huh, who knew those URL shorteners might someday come back to bite us in the booty?

• [Anonymous]

  This letter is in response to the articles covering the civil unrest
  occurring in Libya.

  As a citizen of and believer in democracy, I applaud the efforts of the
  Libyan people. Their efforts are similar to what is happening in Yemen,
  Algeria and Bahrain as well as the most recent revolutions in Egypt and
  Tunisia.

  Believe it or not, one thing that trumps capitalism and political
  correctness in the United States is the right to have one’s voice heard.
  This is the foundation of which our democracy is built on. The Libyan
  people should continue to defy Moammar Gadhafi’s powerful
  security forces so that Libyan democracy can begin to thrive. It is
  unfortunate that the United States compromised on one of its most
  fundamental values in order to protect its economic interests in the
  Middle East; something that happens all too often domestically as well.
  It is not the Libyan people that are attempting to seize power but rather
  it is those currently in power who have engaged in intimidation to prevent
  the will of the people from being heard. Why else would they stoop to such
  underhanded tactics to block various means of communication among the
  citizens of Libya? Why is the government in power utilizing such
  political strong-arm tactics as the use of violence?

  Moammar Gadhafi, you have had forty-two years to lead Libya and have
  failed them by your own choosing. The days of the despotic regime are
  finally coming to an end as it appears the desire for freedom will continue
  to sweep among the Arab nations. Accordingly, let the call go forth among
  all citizens of Libya that your brothers and sisters of democracy from all
  over the world are with you during every trial and tribulation you may
  encounter during this crisis. To the people of Libya, the trumpet of
  freedom beckons you to rise in protest and ensure your voice to preserve
  your sacred heritage, promote your children’s future and obtain the
  blessings of liberty we all cherish. Moammar Gadhafi, let the people
  go!

  JOE BIALEK
  Cleveland, OH USA

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  URL shorteners make the moderator hostile.

• [lolbrandon]

  I come to Boing Boing almost exclusively through bit.ly via Twitterd. If you’re concerned enough about the service to post this, maybe Boing Boing needs to find — or make — a new URL shortener. Twitter has their own shortener, as does Google… although I don’t know if those countries and/or suffixes are any more stable…

• [Anonymous]

  This is a shame because I’ll be glad to see the back of Deck.ly

  140 characters is it people!

• [Pantograph]

  Revolution and liberty sweep the Arab world! Our intrepid reporters are on the spot and ask the questions that matter to humanity!
  Important Question #1: will your Twitter experience be affected?

  Sometimes I think that I left reality behind a decade ago and slipped into a parallel universe controlled by the disembodied mind of Philip K. Dick.
  It would be depressing if it weren’t so funny.

• [Moody75]

  After all the posts about Egypt, all BoingBoing could muster is “what happens to bit.ly?”.
  Really?
  Is that what matters? Not the people dying? Not the society trying to make itself free?

  Really proves this article right:
  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/17/what_if_libya_staged_a_revolution_and_nobody_came?page=full

  • [benher]

    Well, in fairness to BoingBoing they’ve covered the current developments in the mideast from the get-go; and this particular piece of the story has interest to the millions of net users affected. The inclusion of such a story (on a techy-tinted blog no less) doesn’t cheapen the loss of life nor does it require justification. Besides, BB isn’t a news site.

    Of course, If you’d like to read a blog about loss of life in the Arab world (besides the bible or the quran I mean) there is no shortage of them… just make sure you visit them without relying on URL shorteners ;)

• [syncrotic]

  No surprise here: URL shorteners break the web by acting as a single point of failure for millions of links that would otherwise have no need whatsoever to go through them. All this just because one stupid little service got popular on the back of an artificial character count restriction that people enjoyed working within and around.

  • [netsharc]

    Hear-hear!

    When I saw the domains nyti.ms and flic.kr, I knew the Internet as we knew it was fucked.

• [Anonymous]

  As mentioned above, bit.ly will not go down. If it does, why not just move the entire website, URLs and all, to bit.li?

• [holtt]

  Might i suggest the shortening service boi.ng?

• [Anonymous]

  bit.ly goes down? And nothing of value was lost.

• [Anonymous]

  Why Libya won’t riot…
  Population: 6.4 million.
  GDP : 76 billion

  Muammar al-Gaddafi might be as mad as a hatter, but when you are wiping your ass oil dollars, who gives a sh*t?