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Official: vb.ly Link Shortener Seized by Libyan Government

10 points by ukdm 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago
Who cares? They bought a vanity name from a repressive crypto-Islamist dictatorship and built a company around it. Chickens roost. That's what they do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Libya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Libya "We intended vb.ly to be a link shortener that celebrated tolerance [...]". And so you hosted it on a Libyan domain name!
merrick 16y ago
I wouldn't panic yet as a .ly domain owner: "While letters ‘vb’ are quite generic and bear no offensive meaning in themselves, they’re being used as a domain name for an openly admitted ‘adult friendly URL shortener’. Now, had your domain merely been a URL shortener for general uses similar to bit.ly (as you claim) there would have been no problem with it. It is when you promote your site being solely for adult uses, or even state that you are ‘adult friendly’ to promote it that we as a Libyan Registry have an issue." That said, the value of .ly domains definitely just dropped.
- noodle 16y ago
  perhaps. where does the line get drawn though? if someone stumbles across an adult-oriented link in your url shortener, will the libyan government take this to be a violation? will they order you to police the links shortened? will they take down your domain? etc..
  - tptacek 16y ago
    The line gets drawn wherever they want to draw it. This country banned political parties 40 years ago. Why would you give them money?
    - noodle 16y ago
      i wouldn't, but clearly people have. thats more my point -- if they're okay with doing this, they're probably going to be okay to pull arbitrary content.
  - merrick 16y ago
    There is definitely some risk, so mitigate it and buy the ly.com variant of a .ly domain to protect against this - much like ad.ly owns adly.com, embed.ly owns embedly.com. Watch what bit.ly does - likely nothing right now. If they get warning like vb.ly says they did, we will hear about it, and then every .ly owner has a problem.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      Or, they leave Bitly alone because they're the best-known .ly domain, but fuck with everyone else. Because: they can.
kloncks 16y ago
To be honest, I'm just surprised they didn't see this coming. Obviously, if you buy a domain from an old-school ultra-orthodox Islamic dictatorship, you should expect to follow an extra set of laws to please them. The fact that they then decided to build a "sex-positive link shortener" company around it is just astounding.
donohoe 16y ago
Looks like there is a crackdown on .ly domains. See also: http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe/ http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-b...
- arst 16y ago
  Both posts are about the same domain.

10 points by ukdm 16y ago

Who cares? They bought a vanity name from a repressive crypto-Islamist dictatorship and built a company around it. Chickens roost. That's what they do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Libya http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Libya "We intended vb.ly to be a link shortener that celebrated tolerance [...]". And so you hosted it on a Libyan domain name!

merrick 16y ago

I wouldn't panic yet as a .ly domain owner: "While letters ‘vb’ are quite generic and bear no offensive meaning in themselves, they’re being used as a domain name for an openly admitted ‘adult friendly URL shortener’. Now, had your domain merely been a URL shortener for general uses similar to bit.ly (as you claim) there would have been no problem with it. It is when you promote your site being solely for adult uses, or even state that you are ‘adult friendly’ to promote it that we as a Libyan Registry have an issue." That said, the value of .ly domains definitely just dropped.

noodle 16y ago
perhaps. where does the line get drawn though? if someone stumbles across an adult-oriented link in your url shortener, will the libyan government take this to be a violation? will they order you to police the links shortened? will they take down your domain? etc..
- tptacek 16y ago
  The line gets drawn wherever they want to draw it. This country banned political parties 40 years ago. Why would you give them money?
  - noodle 16y ago
    i wouldn't, but clearly people have. thats more my point -- if they're okay with doing this, they're probably going to be okay to pull arbitrary content.
- merrick 16y ago
  There is definitely some risk, so mitigate it and buy the ly.com variant of a .ly domain to protect against this - much like ad.ly owns adly.com, embed.ly owns embedly.com. Watch what bit.ly does - likely nothing right now. If they get warning like vb.ly says they did, we will hear about it, and then every .ly owner has a problem.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Or, they leave Bitly alone because they're the best-known .ly domain, but fuck with everyone else. Because: they can.

kloncks 16y ago

To be honest, I'm just surprised they didn't see this coming. Obviously, if you buy a domain from an old-school ultra-orthodox Islamic dictatorship, you should expect to follow an extra set of laws to please them. The fact that they then decided to build a "sex-positive link shortener" company around it is just astounding.

donohoe 16y ago

Looks like there is a crackdown on .ly domains. See also: http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe/ http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-b...

arst 16y ago
Both posts are about the same domain.