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URL Shorteners Get Some Backup
URL shorteners are problematical, as everybody knows, but with the rise of Twitter and its ilk they seem to be a necessary part of the landscape. Some of the biggest questions around services such as bit.ly, TinyURL, and is.gd is what happens when they go out of business (as tr.im did last August). Now a group of such companies, organized under the auspices of the Internet Archive, has formed a non-profit entity to hold URL-shortening databases in escrow, with the intent of continuing to resolve a member company's links should it get out of the business. At announcement, the 301Works organization has 21 URL-shortener members, including the largest, bit.ly. Many others are not (yet) on board. The members have agreed to cede control of their domain names to 301Works.org should they exit the field, and to back up their URL mappings regularly to the organization.
Problematical is a perfectly cromulent word.
URL shortners only server for twitter posts and other place where you need to count characters, these links become pointless within days of a post (some think they become useless even earlier than that), so why bother preserving them after that? let alone when a provider goes bankrupt.
p.s I'm only posting this so i can get some karma to go troll apple ;)
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Unless they are going bankrupt already, or the creditors have a secured debt, and the domain name is the collateral/security for that debt,
If they don't, then 301works' claim to the domain would be a prior claim, since they have secured an agreement that requires the URL shortening service to continue working, and a specific asset is named in securing that agreement is the domain name.
In other words: it depends on the terms of the agreement with 301works.
In a bankruptcy preceding, the party with the prior claim is normally the one they signed an agreement to deliver the asset to.
For example: if I buy something from an online retailer or mail order catalog, and they enter into bankruptcy after they received my payment for the item, but before they shipped the product... their creditors' don't get to repossess the item I have purchased, my claim comes before theirs, since my payment to purchase the item is a prior claim that I have.
And they have to send me the item, or a refund before they pay other creditors whose debts they defaulted on after my claim was raised.
The key difference: creditors that have a claim to a specific prior claim to a certain asset are at an advantage to the ones that don't.
Since specific cash to pay for the item in exchange for a certain service was provided by me, I have the prior claim to that cash.
Banks and investors that provided unsecured loans, or weren't a trading partner, have to wait in line, according to the priority of creditors.