4 ms·

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,

by 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.
  - smallblacksun 16y ago
    It was yanked for breaking Libyan law. I don't know why people have such a hard time getting the concept that if you want to do business in a country, you have to follow that country's laws.
    - CamperBob 16y ago
      Meanwhile, bit.ly closes a $10M Series B round. Remind me again, what happens when someone creates a bit.ly URL that redirects to an adult site?
- dotBen 16y ago
  I don't care one bit how many books your s.o. has written and how often she's on TV I just wanted to say I think you got the wrong end of the stick on why I wrote that... The gist of what I was trying to communicate is that we don't need to use this "15 minutes of fame" (as you put it) to further ourselves or our projects. The point I was trying to make (which respectfully I don't think you got) is that instead, I'm trying to use the attention to highlight the wider issues of the .ly domain space for those who already own .ly domains, might register one in the future or simply rely on .ly domains such as for url shortening. In other words, this isn't about us. It's about the wider issue of .ly domains in general. I'm sorry that this didn't come across to you from my previous reply.
DannoHung 16y ago
Not really. You registered a domain in a foreign territory when you were not a resident of that territory. It is in the interest of the domain authority for that nation to control its domains in the best interests of the host country. That was what the whole TLD decentralization effort was about.
- dotBen 16y ago
  Not being a resident of Libya has nothing to do with it - why are they selling them to non-Libyans in US DOLLARS? They want international trade! It's not like non-Libyan ly domain owners are being all naughty and sneaking in and grabbing these domains when they shouldn't.

by dotBen 16y ago

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.
- smallblacksun 16y ago
  It was yanked for breaking Libyan law. I don't know why people have such a hard time getting the concept that if you want to do business in a country, you have to follow that country's laws.
  - CamperBob 16y ago
    Meanwhile, bit.ly closes a $10M Series B round. Remind me again, what happens when someone creates a bit.ly URL that redirects to an adult site?
dotBen 16y ago
I don't care one bit how many books your s.o. has written and how often she's on TV I just wanted to say I think you got the wrong end of the stick on why I wrote that... The gist of what I was trying to communicate is that we don't need to use this "15 minutes of fame" (as you put it) to further ourselves or our projects. The point I was trying to make (which respectfully I don't think you got) is that instead, I'm trying to use the attention to highlight the wider issues of the .ly domain space for those who already own .ly domains, might register one in the future or simply rely on .ly domains such as for url shortening. In other words, this isn't about us. It's about the wider issue of .ly domains in general. I'm sorry that this didn't come across to you from my previous reply.

DannoHung 16y ago

Not really. You registered a domain in a foreign territory when you were not a resident of that territory. It is in the interest of the domain authority for that nation to control its domains in the best interests of the host country. That was what the whole TLD decentralization effort was about.

dotBen 16y ago
Not being a resident of Libya has nothing to do with it - why are they selling them to non-Libyans in US DOLLARS? They want international trade! It's not like non-Libyan ly domain owners are being all naughty and sneaking in and grabbing these domains when they shouldn't.