upgrade to 4.4.x results in civimail giving db error on long urls

in 4.2.x client was happily firing out CiviMails with the urls such as below.

Now at step 3>4 we just get a

Sorry but we are not able to provide this at the moment.
DB Error: a515ac9c2796ca0e23adbe92c68fc9fc

with debug we get

[code] => a515ac9c2796ca0e23adbe92c68fc9fc
[message] => DB Error: a515ac9c2796ca0e23adbe92c68fc9fc
[mode] => 16
[debug_info] => INSERT INTO civicrm_mailing_trackable_url (url , mailing_id ) VALUES ('http://www.familiescommission.org.nz/evidence2action-2014-programme?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Evidence2Action%20Registration&utm_content=Evidence2Action%20Registration+CID_581864aa1d663998e1a0a86882206bd8&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=programme' , 437 ) [nativecode=1406 ** Data too long for column 'url' at row 1]

Has the field gotten smaller? Is this related to logging (as per this thread http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,32248.msg137936.html#msg137936)

Can a better error msg be provided? or better still, have a warning within civimail rather than being spat out of it?