4 ms·

Not to add insult to injury, but it is very hard - next to impossible - to believe your version of this over the nic.ly version or vice-versa given the availabl

by dotBen 16y ago

Not to add insult to injury, but it is very hard - next to impossible - to believe your version of this over the nic.ly version or vice-versa given the available evidence. We didn't receive any prior warnings. If you're, essentially, saying you don't believe me then that's your call. I'm not sure what more I can do. Sad.

jacquesm 16y ago
No, what I'm saying is that for an outsider it is impossible to know the truth, no matter who you would want to believe or who you care about most. Personally, I think you should be able to do whatever you want with domains that you register in your name and that you paid for, so I'm sympathetic to your case. But the time to move on is NOW, not three weeks from now so use your 15 minutes of fame to relaunch your service on a new domain while the media hype lasts or you'll have to start completely from scratch. You might even be able to turn this whole thing to your advantage, I'm not a fan of URL shorteners in any way, but if you're going to do one then make use of this, turn a disadvantage in to an opportunity. I'd never even heard of vb.ly before, I have now, and I'm sure that a relaunch on a very short timeframe would still get you some media coverage.
- dotBen 16y ago
  Personally, I think you should be able to do whatever you want with domains that you register in your name and that you paid for Do you not think that, really, this is the key issue and is a million more times more important for everyone than what we were doing with the url shortener itself? I've spend a large amount of my career helping to build a free press (http:/bbc.co.uk/news) and it's something I believe strongly in. Violet has published 30+ books on sex and sexuality and is a guest on Oprah and other outlets. I've got a good name for myself across the UK and San Francisco start-up scene even if you've never heard of me. I don't think we need to use this to get publicity for ourselves or our service (which was never really commercial, we ran it for the benefit of the community). The reason we're making a big deal of this is the censorship angle and making sure that everyone else who has a .ly knows what is going on. We could have just let them do this and no one would have known.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    You make the mistake of trying to impose your own worldview and morals on an entity that has absolutely no stake in that and has fairly clearly indicated that your views and theirs are in conflict, and likely will remain so. You are not going to convince Libya, the Liberian government or NIC.ly to change their mind on this, and here on HN you are preaching to the choir. Of course censorship is bad. And editorial control by a registrar over the content of websites under their TLD sucks. But that was spelled out up-front. You may think that that is the key issue, but in reality the key issue is if you're going to wise up to the fact that you're fighting windmills here and that if you don't move on, and fast that all your work on this will have come to naught. I fully understand you're upset, but frankly I don't care one bit how many books your s.o. has written and how often she's on TV, the censorship angle has nothing to do with it, unless you were purposely doing this from the beginning to create a case to show that censorship from sexuality in Islamic countries was what you had in mind when you registered that domain. Personally I have a hard time believing that, I think that that is something that only came about after you found your domain taken off-line, in other words, you only started to care about censorship after being censored. Sure, censorship is bad. That's why you stay away from dealing with government entities that will allow themselves the right to censor you. See Google vs China and many other examples.
    - CamperBob 16y ago
      Why are you busting his balls (and being modded up for it)? The fact is, their domain name was granted, used for some time to build a business, and then yanked by the registrar on religious-bullshit grounds. They proceeded to warn other users of the .ly domain who may not have bothered to read the fine print and whose domains must now be considered in jeopardy. Personally I have a hard time believing that, I think that that is something that only came about after you found your domain taken off-line, in other words, you only started to care about censorship after being censored. This speculation adds nothing to the conversation. Sure, censorship is bad. That's why you stay away from dealing with government entities that will allow themselves the right to censor you. That would be all of them. See Google vs China and many other examples. I assume you've carefully read all regulations and EULAs applying to your own personal and business assets? No? Well, there you go, then.

by dotBen 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago

No, what I'm saying is that for an outsider it is impossible to know the truth, no matter who you would want to believe or who you care about most. Personally, I think you should be able to do whatever you want with domains that you register in your name and that you paid for, so I'm sympathetic to your case. But the time to move on is NOW, not three weeks from now so use your 15 minutes of fame to relaunch your service on a new domain while the media hype lasts or you'll have to start completely from scratch. You might even be able to turn this whole thing to your advantage, I'm not a fan of URL shorteners in any way, but if you're going to do one then make use of this, turn a disadvantage in to an opportunity. I'd never even heard of vb.ly before, I have now, and I'm sure that a relaunch on a very short timeframe would still get you some media coverage.

dotBen 16y ago
Personally, I think you should be able to do whatever you want with domains that you register in your name and that you paid for Do you not think that, really, this is the key issue and is a million more times more important for everyone than what we were doing with the url shortener itself? I've spend a large amount of my career helping to build a free press (http:/bbc.co.uk/news) and it's something I believe strongly in. Violet has published 30+ books on sex and sexuality and is a guest on Oprah and other outlets. I've got a good name for myself across the UK and San Francisco start-up scene even if you've never heard of me. I don't think we need to use this to get publicity for ourselves or our service (which was never really commercial, we ran it for the benefit of the community). The reason we're making a big deal of this is the censorship angle and making sure that everyone else who has a .ly knows what is going on. We could have just let them do this and no one would have known.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  You make the mistake of trying to impose your own worldview and morals on an entity that has absolutely no stake in that and has fairly clearly indicated that your views and theirs are in conflict, and likely will remain so. You are not going to convince Libya, the Liberian government or NIC.ly to change their mind on this, and here on HN you are preaching to the choir. Of course censorship is bad. And editorial control by a registrar over the content of websites under their TLD sucks. But that was spelled out up-front. You may think that that is the key issue, but in reality the key issue is if you're going to wise up to the fact that you're fighting windmills here and that if you don't move on, and fast that all your work on this will have come to naught. I fully understand you're upset, but frankly I don't care one bit how many books your s.o. has written and how often she's on TV, the censorship angle has nothing to do with it, unless you were purposely doing this from the beginning to create a case to show that censorship from sexuality in Islamic countries was what you had in mind when you registered that domain. Personally I have a hard time believing that, I think that that is something that only came about after you found your domain taken off-line, in other words, you only started to care about censorship after being censored. Sure, censorship is bad. That's why you stay away from dealing with government entities that will allow themselves the right to censor you. See Google vs China and many other examples.
  - CamperBob 16y ago
    Why are you busting his balls (and being modded up for it)? The fact is, their domain name was granted, used for some time to build a business, and then yanked by the registrar on religious-bullshit grounds. They proceeded to warn other users of the .ly domain who may not have bothered to read the fine print and whose domains must now be considered in jeopardy. Personally I have a hard time believing that, I think that that is something that only came about after you found your domain taken off-line, in other words, you only started to care about censorship after being censored. This speculation adds nothing to the conversation. Sure, censorship is bad. That's why you stay away from dealing with government entities that will allow themselves the right to censor you. That would be all of them. See Google vs China and many other examples. I assume you've carefully read all regulations and EULAs applying to your own personal and business assets? No? Well, there you go, then.