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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 wr

by 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.

jacquesm 16y ago
> 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. Ok, I believe you. What made you decide to go ahead with the .ly domain after you read about their terms of service? For me their policy would be a huge red flag, there is no way that I would ever invest any time or effort or funds in to something on such a shaky foundation, that's the part that puzzles me most about all this. After all it should have given you an indication that the NIC of the TLD that you decided on had a dim view of anything adult related. My view of the .ly other TLDs like that is they are used mainly by several gropus of people, most notably those that try to imitate something that is already successful (for instance, bit.ly), or they feel that there is not enough choice for catchy names in the predominant TLDs. In your case I can see a technical motivation (URL shorteners should have a short domain name or else their whole purpose goes away), and a bit of the imitation factor. But those two together don't offset the risk for me, so what made you do it? Why not secure their agreement that they would be ok with this beforehand? Someone else here in this thread mentioned that I probably don't read the terms of service of the services that I use, and the funny fact is that I do, and that I pick my suppliers very carefully, even if that sometimes means paying a (hefty) premium. Business continuity is nothing to trifle with.
- dotBen 16y ago
  What made you decide to go ahead with the .ly domain after you read about their terms of service? Sure, thanks for asking - and perhaps I should highlight this elsewhere. So we DID read the regulations (at http://nic.ly/regulations.php http://nic.ly/regulations.php). It doesn't say ANYTHING in their regulations that they are going to make editorial decisions upon the content of your site (as I said previously, anything written on LibyanSpider.com is reference and not the article of record, and as it happens they have changed a lot of wording since we registered the domain 13+ months ago -- yes, they had no problems with this for over a year!). People have written whole blog posts on how we were wrong because it says clearly they won't allow sexual or offensive references in domains. But the wording in that caluse pertains to the DOMAIN and just the domain, not the content of the site. And so the string "vb" in vb.ly clearly doesn't infringe on any issues around sexual or offensive content. So we're good so far, would you not agree? The area we considered, and which ultimately NIC.ly said we were in violation of is: 3.5 The Applicant certifies that, to the best of his/her knowledge the domain name is not being registered for any activities/purpose not permitted under Libyan law. Now let me use what NIC.ly actually wrote to us, rather than this wider peanut gallery speculation that people are putting upon this. As per http://techyum.com/2010/10/official-vb-ly-link-shortener-seized-by-libyan-government/ http://techyum.com/2010/10/official-vb-ly-link-shortener-sei..., Mr Alaeddin S. ElSharif of NIC.ly wrote: Moving up the Regulations list we find clause 3.5 clearly states that: “The Applicant certifies that, to the best of his/her knowledge the domain name is not being registered for any activities/purpose not permitted under Libyan law.” Pornography and adult material aren’t allowed under Libyan Law, therefore we removed the domain, Sure, ok: pornography and adult material isn't allowed under Libyan Law. We didn't host any Pornography or adult material. The site was a single page, as you can see from the screen grab on the TechYum url above. So in conclusion I feel we performed the due diligence as per the regulations and stayed within the regs. What I didn't expect is that NIC.ly would interpret their regulations quite liberally (no pun intended) in an effort to close the domain. They claim there was a lot of pressure upon them internally to do that, but what I assumed (incorrectly) is that no matter what pressure there might be if something is within regs then I don't expect the rug to be pulled out from under me. What do you make of the above, Jacques, seeing as you have been quite vocal on this top within this HN thread? Thanks

by dotBen 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago

> 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. Ok, I believe you. What made you decide to go ahead with the .ly domain after you read about their terms of service? For me their policy would be a huge red flag, there is no way that I would ever invest any time or effort or funds in to something on such a shaky foundation, that's the part that puzzles me most about all this. After all it should have given you an indication that the NIC of the TLD that you decided on had a dim view of anything adult related. My view of the .ly other TLDs like that is they are used mainly by several gropus of people, most notably those that try to imitate something that is already successful (for instance, bit.ly), or they feel that there is not enough choice for catchy names in the predominant TLDs. In your case I can see a technical motivation (URL shorteners should have a short domain name or else their whole purpose goes away), and a bit of the imitation factor. But those two together don't offset the risk for me, so what made you do it? Why not secure their agreement that they would be ok with this beforehand? Someone else here in this thread mentioned that I probably don't read the terms of service of the services that I use, and the funny fact is that I do, and that I pick my suppliers very carefully, even if that sometimes means paying a (hefty) premium. Business continuity is nothing to trifle with.

dotBen 16y ago
What made you decide to go ahead with the .ly domain after you read about their terms of service? Sure, thanks for asking - and perhaps I should highlight this elsewhere. So we DID read the regulations (at http://nic.ly/regulations.php http://nic.ly/regulations.php). It doesn't say ANYTHING in their regulations that they are going to make editorial decisions upon the content of your site (as I said previously, anything written on LibyanSpider.com is reference and not the article of record, and as it happens they have changed a lot of wording since we registered the domain 13+ months ago -- yes, they had no problems with this for over a year!). People have written whole blog posts on how we were wrong because it says clearly they won't allow sexual or offensive references in domains. But the wording in that caluse pertains to the DOMAIN and just the domain, not the content of the site. And so the string "vb" in vb.ly clearly doesn't infringe on any issues around sexual or offensive content. So we're good so far, would you not agree? The area we considered, and which ultimately NIC.ly said we were in violation of is: 3.5 The Applicant certifies that, to the best of his/her knowledge the domain name is not being registered for any activities/purpose not permitted under Libyan law. Now let me use what NIC.ly actually wrote to us, rather than this wider peanut gallery speculation that people are putting upon this. As per http://techyum.com/2010/10/official-vb-ly-link-shortener-seized-by-libyan-government/ http://techyum.com/2010/10/official-vb-ly-link-shortener-sei..., Mr Alaeddin S. ElSharif of NIC.ly wrote: Moving up the Regulations list we find clause 3.5 clearly states that: “The Applicant certifies that, to the best of his/her knowledge the domain name is not being registered for any activities/purpose not permitted under Libyan law.” Pornography and adult material aren’t allowed under Libyan Law, therefore we removed the domain, Sure, ok: pornography and adult material isn't allowed under Libyan Law. We didn't host any Pornography or adult material. The site was a single page, as you can see from the screen grab on the TechYum url above. So in conclusion I feel we performed the due diligence as per the regulations and stayed within the regs. What I didn't expect is that NIC.ly would interpret their regulations quite liberally (no pun intended) in an effort to close the domain. They claim there was a lot of pressure upon them internally to do that, but what I assumed (incorrectly) is that no matter what pressure there might be if something is within regs then I don't expect the rug to be pulled out from under me. What do you make of the above, Jacques, seeing as you have been quite vocal on this top within this HN thread? Thanks