[dkasper]

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 bought the domain it needs to be yours in perpetuity, as it is with other property. This is a completely artificial problem based on archaic rules that has a straightforward solution.

[tptacek]

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 countries their two-letter ISO code; if you want to blame someone, blame Postel.

I personally think it's a reasonable policy, and that the fault lies in people willing to do business with a manifestly evil country for the sake of a vanity domain.

[jrockway]

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!

[tptacek]

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

[jrockway]

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

This breaks the Internet.

[tptacek]

This exact same argument says that Namecheap should lose its registrar status for "breaking the internet" when people don't pay to renew their domains.

Similarly, if Apple ever made the mistake of setting up an NS record pointing JROCKWAY.APPLE.COM to your nameserver, they'd be "breaking the internet" to change their mind.

The reality is that there is no technical difference at all between LY. and APPLE.COM.

[jrockway]

No technical difference, but as a TLD, they should be held to a higher standard.

[pbhjpbhj]

>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.

[brownleej]

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.