For the record we did NOT receive any communication from NIC.ly before they pulled the vb.ly domain.
We had received other emails from them previously including our domain renewal notice just a month and a half before so I know they had a working email address for us and that we were receiving their other correspondence.
They've made out in their statement that we ignored their email - given how upset myself and Violet Blue have been over this I would urge people to consider whether these are the actions of two people who would intentionally ignore such a significant warning. Why would we do that?
I do, however, feel relieved that they will not be letting anyone else register the domain - we were concerned from a security perspective of someone else registering the domain and re-routing existing vb.ly links out there to insecure or spoofed websites.
(we hadn't highlighted this concern previously because we didn't want to give anyone ideas but now they have said the domain is 'locked' I'm happy to talk about that concern)
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. All there is are stories.
You are the 'injured party' and it is to your advantage to present your case as strong as possible, and not being warned is of course going to make the other side look bad.
They in turn are going to make it seem as though they did everything they could and only used the disabling as a last resort.
From what I understand though, you were happy to operate this service under their terms and conditions, knowing full well that they could repossess the domain at a moments notice.
I would very much like to believe that they never sent you any email but it's going to be very hard for you to prove that conclusively, they are going to have an equally hard time showing that they warned you, but even if they didn't it will not change things much (as far as I can see they're not going to have a change of heart any time soon).
If I were you I'd pick a .com that has a good ring to it and relaunch, use the current media frenzy around the story to get your new name out there before you are 'old news'.
That way you get to rescue as much of the wreckage as possible.
Think about the future, not about the past. Good luck!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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). 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.
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?
Your screenshot depicts Violet with a half-full bottle of beer. You know alcohol is illegal in Libya, yes? It's at least predictable that some people at that end feel offended by this regardless of whether or not we do. For starters.
I really don't think you thought this through at all. Did you even consider asking an Arabic person to take a quick look into their rules?
> But the wording in that caluse pertains to the DOMAIN and just the domain, not the content of the site
Yes, that's true but that assumes a westerners mindset where you can go and argue and if you are right 'you will get your way'. To me the fact that that clause is present is a warning that they do care about the content of the URLs themselves, which is one step removed from the content of the site. In that case I would have either decided to let it go or I would have decided to contact them to get an advance ruling if what I'm doing is ok with them.
> So we're good so far, would you not agree?
Technically, yes. But if they decide otherwise you will have to go to court after pointing it out to them and then all they have to do is insert paragraph 4.4 which states that they now also reserve the right to yank .ly domains.
See, the whole idea that this is somehow 'right' is wrong to begin with. They reserve the right to literally do what pleases them and you might be right in a lawyerly sense but that won't get you anywhere until you're willing to take it to a judge. And then you'd have to find a way to convince that judge that:
(1) having abided by the original terms of service you should be given your domain back
(2) that even after you're given your domain back the only terms of service that apply to you are the ones in effect at the first registration date, any amendments do not apply to you
(3) that free sexuality is not in conflict with Libyan law
Add to that that every bit of publicity around this will likely work against you in a society like that where 'setting examples' and a general dislike of a public lack of perceived morality are the norm. Even if that's just lip service that's an uphill battle.
> We didn't host any Pornography or adult material.
But you were actively promoting things that might be construed offensive or pornographic according to them.
I've had a number of Turkish friends in the Netherlands, all very nice and well adjusted people. Except on one front, the way dutch women dress. To a man they considered dutch women 'harlots', and they used a much less friendly term for them because of their dress.
What's pornography to you and a Libyan devout believer might be two very different things.
> 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.
I think that you are probably at odds with a single individual very high up the tree in the Libyan TLD administrator, who finds the content offensive and wants to make sure that a signal is sent out to sites that associate themselves with western morality when it comes to sexuality to leave the .ly domains alone. I admit freely that that's pure speculation on my part.
> The site was a single page, as you can see from the screen grab on the TechYum url above.
To some people that image would be offensive. I understand if that is something that you can not even fathom, please contrast it with the amazement of US visitors to the Netherlands when they go to the beach here and see plenty of naked people. They too find it offensive, here nobody bats an eye (though some might peek).
> So in conclusion I feel we performed the due diligence as per the regulations and stayed within the regs.
ok.
You underestimate how loose the interpretation of rules can be when you are no longer in a 'Western' society, the safe bet for stuff like this is 'when in Rome do as the Romans do', and to use a country specific domain for something that people in that country are unlikely to engage in and that might offend sensibilities there is not the best course of action, even if by our standards you are both in the right and should be perfectly free to do as you like.
By my standards nudism is fine, homosexuals should be able to marry and people should be allowed to smoke pot and even use hard drugs if they desire to do so, and that people should have the right to end their own lives (and with dignity) if they so desire, but by the standards of the US that is not the case.
So I probably wouldn't make a site with lots of instructions on how to grow pot or other stuff like that under a .us domain and expect to be allowed to operate it. Maybe they'll let it go, maybe they won't but I am not in an urgent need to find out.
I find that just as bad, and possibly worse because to me the US can and should be held to higher standards than Libya, given their usual attitude of having the moral high ground in matters like this.
So I take on board a lot of your points and also minded that there comes a point in all this where perhaps we're only going to get so close to agreeing. To debate this much more probably offers diminishing returns.
Two comments though if I may:
Your point on
...that won't get you anywhere until you're willing to take it to a judge [in the local country].
While you might be right on one hand, if we conducted our life based on that then many things in life would be curtailed.
I don't have the resources to visit Canada to visit court if I needed be, does that mean I shouldn't sell my stuff on eBay to someone in Canada?
I want to visit Japan for vacation but I don't have the resource to go to court for damages if the hotel doesn't honor my booking - do I therefore not visit Japan?
I like to buy books and stuff from Amazon but I don't really have the resources or inclination to go to court in Washington State (3 hrs flight away) if they run off with my money and don't send me my stuff. Does that mean I don't buy things from Amazon.com?
I want to rent an apartment here in San Francisco but I don't really have the resources or inclination to go to court if the landlord takes my deposit - does that mean I shouldn't rent here?
etc.
Do you REALLY think everyone who buys .ly domains is prepared to go to Libyan court (including bit.ly?). Other way around, do you think everyone who registers a .com/net/org is prepared to go to US federal court?
It's also interesting that you assume I'm American, as you've made several references to that in my post. I'm actually British, spent most of my adult life living in one of the most populated Islamic areas of London and indeed the UK (Bethnal Green, East London) and I've read most of the Qur'an as part of my education (not the case for education here in the US, as it happens). I've extensively traveled through many Islamic countries.
I'm pretty aware of what Islam thinks is right or not based on it's views of decency and I actually thought we were careful to navigate around that based on what the NIC.ly regulations said they would (and wouldn't) regulate around. The point is that I don't think Islam or Libya for that matter is some crooked society where the rules of law are malleable as you make out. Perhaps on that last point I am wrong.
> Do you REALLY think everyone who buys .ly domains is prepared to go to Libyan court (including bit.ly?)
No, but that you don't go to court in general is taken to mean that either you don't care enough about the issue, that you consider your chances weak or that you feel that you can spend your time better, or any combination of that.
You could go to court, challenge their decision and maybe it would go your way. I personally don't believe it is worth the effort, if you have other ways of resurrecting your website then I would concentrate on that instead.
I've gone to court abroad several times and have won in each of those cases, I cared enough that I thought a lawsuit was warranted and even though it cost me plenty I think it was well worth it. I figured my chances were good, and that of course factored in there as well.
Going to court on principle is an expensive hobby.
> It's also interesting that you assume I'm American, as you've made several references to that in my post.
I tried to stay away from that and tried to use 'western' as a stand in, so if I slipped up then my apologies, HN is quite US centric and at times it feels like the people from other countries here are a serious minority. Especially around US election time.
And you do live in San Francisco, so for now at least you seem to be part of the US more than of the UK, so maybe that would not have been such a bad assumption after all ;)
> The point is that I don't think Islam or Libya for that matter is some crooked society where the rules of law are malleable as you make out. Perhaps on that last point I am wrong.
I think their laws are not 'malleable' per se, I think that expecting a Western attitude towards the law in non-Western countries is simply not the right thing to do.
We are very 'straight lined', we believe in logic in all its glory and we like things to be clear. Non-Western societies are much more arranged around customs and the things that are 'not said'. For them to spell out that this is not permitted is possibly already maneuvering them in to a corner where they'd rather not be.
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.
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.
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.
Geez way to call someone a liar. Why would you believe a known shady government over anyone? I don't think Ben is trying to gain anything out of this besides warning people of .ly's governance. I for one am glad I know this now.
I'm not calling him a liar. I just pointed out that he can't prove his site of it and neither can they. It may even be that both parties are telling the truth (for instance because of some overactive spam filter). Personally I wished that if they did contact them and it did not work that they would now take the suspension under review (assuming contact has by now been solidly re-established). But I think that NIC.ly is not going to change their mind, they have their views on morals and standards and (as PG suggested) might have had ulterior motives (also impossible to prove or disprove) so it is simply not going to go anywhere from what I can see.
Lessons learned:
- don't rely on domains in regions where you have no representation
- have a plan B if you do
- if you can't read the text don't agree to it
- don't waste time trying to convince parties with
other views on morals that they're wrong (especially
if those morals have been dicated by some religious
views)
Can you explain to me why anyone could be expected to mobilize over "censorship" of your URL shortener? The Libyan government kills journalists. All they did to you was shut off your Libyan vanity domain name.
Why do you keep insisting that the NIC.ly people are part of the Libyan government?
Even the 'victim' in this case is quite careful to make the distinction between the two.
I don't doubt there are contacts between the two and I'm sure they operate with the permission of the Libyan government but they're not one and the same.
well they're the official data service of a soverign, so it seems if you put a tool that powerful in the hands of anyone they'd use it. You're implying theres seperation between autocratic power and anything without it being explicitly stated?
So when we were finally able to email directly with NIC.ly (post deletion) they said that the domain was removed because they didn't like the 'scantily clad' lady on the front page (and only page) of the site (which was Violet, in this photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dotben/3674835644/)
They're essentially now changing their tune for PR reasons.
The site's purpose was NOT to shorten pornographic urls, it was described as a "sex positive" url shortener in line with Violet's work as a best-selling author and academic in this space. being "sex positive" is not the same as saying "shorten your porn here".
As I said in the first thread; I think there is just a cultural misunderstanding over what is pornographic, obscene or overtly sexual.
It is very hard for our extremely liberal modern society (especially the subset of it that uses the internet extensively) to understand a radically different culture.
So while that image and the wording seems entirely innocent to us in such cultures it is a very uncomfortable thing (a combination of uncomfortable things in fact).
I'm not saying I entirely believe this is the reason for the domains removal, but if it is then the complaint seems reasonable to me.
Which is why everyone should be allowed to post what they want, and why everyone should be allowed to not visit sites that offend them.
Hell, my company blocks "offensive sites". Buy that software, install it on your desktop, and then you won't have to see anything on the Internet other than LGF.
Domain registries regularly do so including all the major ones. Particularly common are pulling domains used for scams, controlling viruses, illegal pornography and of course famously the pulling of wikileaks domains for leaking documents.
> The domain has also been excluded from future registrations so that no other entity (local or abroad) can re-register it.
So much for PGs theory that someone there wanted the domain and they took it at a pretext: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764475 It should be easy enough to check up on it periodically to see if they're true to their word.
I wonder if the "local Libyan internet community" is an open body or if they are semi government.
On the whole this is a pretty levelheaded and clear response, and it never hurts to see the other side of the story.
That said, I still think that you're much better off to invest your time, money and effort in to .com, .net and .org domains and to steer clear of cutesy domains from countries that can disable your domain based on the content of your services.
That's what they say now. Maybe it was their original motivation; maybe not. But I know for a fact they've confiscated names in order to resell them in the past, because they did it to Answerly.
Yes, that's what makes this hard, but keeping an eye on them is trivial, and it would be easy enough to call them out on this for any future violations where they sell the domain.
What was their stated reason for repossessing the answerly domain?
The bit in the other thread reads like this:
"We purchased .ly variant of our domain name through an authorized Libyan registrar about 10 months ago. It was seized back without explanation a few days later. When I contacted the registrar I was told that the domain was available for "four figures" through domains.ly (an aftermarket .ly reseller service that is operated by the same authorized registrar we used to purchase the domain initially). The domain wasn't critical, so we didn't pursue it any further.", so that seems to be a ploy by the (greedy) registrar rather than by NIC.ly from what I can see.
And when you "call them out on this" and they ignore you, because domain registration revenue is a pittance next to the revenues they get from petrochemicals, what's your next step?
But I also won't be giving them the benefit of the doubt, which given the evidence is the only course of action in this case. They clearly spelled out what they were going to do, there are cases on record of the NIC.ly institution contacting other website owners regarding their content and if Ben & Co had simply decided to go for a .com instead of .ly for their 'sex positive' (whatever that means) URL shortener instead of trying to walk this very fine line then none of this would have happened.
It's just that they will not be able to hide behind that trick more than once, so they just cut off some of their own room to maneuver in a very public way.
If a .ly ever gets repossessed and re-sold within a timespan short enough that the press still remembers they'll be torn to shreds.
And anybody that continues to base their business on a .ly has been properly warned and should move away from there.
That's in direct conflict with the NIC.ly regulations:
"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."
Which is based on Islamic law, which is notorious for heavy handed limitations on what people can do in their version of morality.
"4.2 Domain names must not contain obscene, scandalous, indecent, or contrary to Libyan law or Islamic morality words, phrases nor abbreviations."
So just saying that that is your mission already rules out a .ly domain for you, even if the actual domain name itself is still within the rules, polyandrous relationships, free sexuality (especially free female sexuality) and so on are likely to offend.
That does not make it right. But you have to pick your battles.
I think it's worth pointing out here that NIC.ly != Libyan Government.
Yes, it's part of Libyan Telecom (which maybe government owned, I don't know) - but in all of my writing on the subject at least I've been careful to separate the two.
Clearly the decision making process around all this is being done by a few individuals at NIC.ly, not the Libyan Government.
The revenue from the largest domain registrars in the world won't move the dials on the Libyan GDP. And .LY isn't even close to one of the largest TLDs. The Libyan economy is dominated by an 11-figure petrochemical industry. I'm not seeing the "if" here.
1. The revenue from petrochemicals is not going to NIC.ly.
2. You contested jacquesm's argument that NIC.ly can be "called out" when the sell the domain. You said that, NIC.ly will probably ignore that because the domain registering revenue is a pittance. If that is true, then NIC.ly won't try to confiscate and then sell a domain. Why go to all that trouble when they can sit back and enjoy petrochemical dollars.
a: So if NIC.ly thinks domain registration revenues are a pittance, then they won't sell the domain.
b: If it is not a pittance they can be called out because they have to listen to valid complaints. Otherwise no one will register .ly domains
Pretty good statement in my opinion. It's sad that western media portrayed this entire incident as a "crazy muslim country that does whatever it wants in the name of Sharia law." Seriously?
The communication could have been better (or perhaps it was nonexistent), but if they have regulations not allowing adult and NSFW content on their domains, they are well within their rights. There are many US hosts that have similar regulations and its absolutely understandable.
I've yet to see someone say they aren't within their right. I think the complaint is in the lack of upfront warning, and the track record of seizing non-sex related domains (Answer.ly).
… My advice, stay clear of putting your business interest in the hands of countries like Libya. These guys are still decades from simple notions as the rule of law, no direct offense to Libya and Libyans.
[EDIT] It may be hard for everyone to understand my point because of cultural differences, BUT I lived in similar country, I’m talking from experience not common sense.
Yeah, did you read ALL of the regulations? Including the bit about your content needing to stay within Libyan law.
Try finding ANYWHERE on the Internet that outlines what Libyan law is in English.
And I say English not because I expect the Internet to all be in English, but simply because as you point out the official NIC.ly regulations are published in English.
Without that, it is impossible to put together a complete set of the regulations (the NIC.ly regs + the Libyan law).
How can you hold the NIC.ly administration responsible for there not being a Libyan law reference in English?
One way to deal with stuff like this is to engage the services of a local legal expert and have them spell it out for you. That's not a thing for a layperson, even if they're versed in Arabic.
You should do the same if you intend to register a .de domain and don't have access to the German law texts and/or do not speak German. The German authorities are under no obligation to present their texts in English, in fact they would definitely not do a thing like that because it would create potential ambiguity.
And yes, I read all of the regulations, and yes, I think they're perfectly reasonable. And I would never ever think of registering a .ly domain because of those regulations.
This is what I keep coming back to. When you register a foreign domain, you are at the mercy of the laws/whims of that entity. Eyes wide open and all that.
I'm not sure I understand the hubbub over this. When you register a domain from a country where.. um, "reasonable dispute resolution" can't be expected, caveat emptor.
If this was a dispute with Network Solutions, or GoDaddy, I can see the outrage. But it's with a domain associated with Libya. I say again, Libya.
Lower your expectations, and then lower them even more.
I dunno what your comment has to do with anything other than getting upvotes, which I'm sure you'll get plenty of.
My comment was more geared towards pointing out the obvious incompatibility of US based porn capitalist and Libyan Arab Socialist government. And that's not even getting into history of these two countries' relations.
I'm amused how little educated some people here are about the Rest of the World.
...pointing out the obvious incompatibility of US based porn capitalist and Libyan Arab Socialist government. And that's not even getting into history of these two countries' relations.
from your original comment:
It's not simply Libya.
This country's full name is Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
I tend to think the more common takeaway from your comment is that you were being picky about my use of Libya's common name as opposed to the full name. That's how I read it.
Who cares what they say? This is an organization run in a nation state without the rule of law. There is no governing organization you can appeal to to ensure their decisionmaking is consistent. The rule that allocated them ".ly" is (essentially) ISO 3166-1, and ISO 3166-1 does not care about you, your business, or your rights. Neither, it should go without saying, does Libya.
> This is an organization run in a nation state without the rule of law.
Libya actually has a pretty modern legal system (other than being based on 'Sharia' law that is), with several levels of appeal possible including a supreme court.
> There is no governing organization you can appeal to to ensure their decisionmaking is consistent.
Actually, there is:
This Regulation shall be interpreted and construed under Libyan Law.
So you could appeal to the Libyan courts. As they say though, good luck with that, but that would be something to do before making the claim that this was unlawful.
That doesn't mean anything. The "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" outlawed political parties 40 years ago and has been ruled by Muammar Gaddafi ever since. The Iraqi Baath party could have made the same legal process claims, while leaving out the fact that you'd be slowly boiled in a vat of oil if you attempted to avail yourself of that process.
We need to stop kidding ourselves. Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it not real: people buying .ly names are doing business with one of the world's great dictatorships. Whether or not that's bad ethically, it sure is a dubious business decision.
> That doesn't mean anything. The "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" outlawed political parties 40 years ago and has been ruled by Muammar Gaddafi ever since.
Agreed, but you'd have to give them the benefit of the doubt before pronouncing judgment, otherwise you can't make that statement. After their courts have let you down you could make the case that you've been duped but given the terms-of-service I would not find it totally incredible if the courts sided with the NIC for valid reasons.
> The Iraqi Baath party could have made the same legal process claims, while leaving out the fact that you'd be slowly boiled in a vat of oil if you attempted to avail yourself of that process.
Unlikely in this case, and we're discussing Libya, not Iraq before the removal of Saddam Hussain & his cronies.
> We need to stop kidding ourselves. Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it not real: people buying .ly names are doing business with one of the world's great dictatorships.
As dictatorships come, Libya is fairly small fry. Just like in former Iraq - which we're still not discussing ;) - life for most Libyans is at a perfectly acceptable standard for the region, and they are not so upset about these things that they seem to be inclined to overthrow their government any time soon.
> Whether or not that's bad ethically, it sure is a dubious business decision.
Personally I would not do business with a .ly registrar exactly because I would not want to put my business at risk like that, but also because doing so effectively sustains a regime that I feel no sympathy for. I don't think that any money sent to the .ly registrars will end up to benefit the Libyan population in general, but most likely will end up in a few very select pockets or to do stuff that I do not want to be associated with.
I don't have to give them the benefit of the doubt. It would in fact be stupid to do so. The Libyan government does far, far worse things than capriciously turning off domains on a regular basis. That logic is repellent.
We need to stop kidding ourselves. .ly really is Libya. I don't support bombing them, or anything crazy like that, but doing business with them is lunacy.
> I don't have to give them the benefit of the doubt. It would in fact be stupid to do so.
So in any altercation between a westerner and the Libyan government the Libyan government is automatically at fault?
> The Libyan government does far, far worse things than capriciously turning off domains on a regular basis.
Agreed.
> That logic is repellent.
No, that's just not descending to their level because I disagree with their politics.
> We need to stop kidding ourselves. .ly really is Libya. I don't support bombing them, or anything crazy like that, but doing business with them is lunacy.
That's up to every individual to make that choice, I would advise against it but those that do have made their bed and should lie in it rather than complain.
I think in this case they did good to all of humanity by removing it ;p ( I used to think free speech was above all until I forgot my account log in for 5 mintues once at work and someone wrote a script that pulled up firefox and goatse every 5 minutes ;p)
You simply deserved to loose that domain. The lybian tld has their own set rules, you didn't obey to their TOS, so you loose your domain.
If they contacted you or not, is completely irrelevant.
And I guess that they did contact you, but if you would acknowledge it now, it would come out that you were lying big from the start.
I'm offended that NIC.LY would use the expression "sex positive". It should be shut down.
(Incidentally, paranoia about my domain being killed is why I have my real contact information in my .us registration. NIC.* registrars seem to be super-strict about their registration policies.)
I find this story about vb.ly pretty interesting.
First of all, I'm sorry for your loss ! :) The thing is, as many pointed out, don't expect to be able to negociate anything with Libya. I'm not saying it's a bad country or anything, but it's just how this country runs ! They do their stuff, and that's ok with me. (I'm no-one to have any concern about how the libians should run their internet).
The .ly domains are pretty popular these days. Maybe because there is bit.ly which is well known, and because 'ly' is something new, and better than '.fr' for example. But maybe it's time to move on. I know, the domain is important. But vb.ly is not like smart.ly ! it's not a word. You can take any other domain from now, and your name won't change that much.
Jacquesm (who I respect a lot), is saying the key bit is that they won't let anyone register this domain again. What makes me write a comment here is another 'bit', : "We as a Registry would prefer seeing art.ly used for a website about Libyan art for instance, or lda.ly used by the Libyan De-mining Association, rather than adding more URL shorteners under our National TLD."
THIS, is something I really can understand. The net is something done globally, and it's not something that just can be ruled by what _we_ call the western world. The LY domain is the libian top domain. As far as I know, Libya is a country, and they so have the right to rule this domain as they wish. Maybe they want some control over it ? That's their right. They have policies different than the .com NIC registration rules, they also have the right to be different, in their .ly ruling, than what _we_ (the westerns) have done done with the .net/.com/.org domains.
And maybe this call to 'we would prefer art.ly pointing to a libian art website' is maybe only PR stuff. But even in France I remember some trials about national TV's websites (france2.fr, france3.fr) that foreigners owned. These owners lost their domains due to the fact that .FR domains are made FOR FRANCE. That means, France, the country, can do whatever he wants with the .FR if you don't comply to THEIR rules. So, in short, I'm just saying I completely agree with that particular point.
Libya is growing, it's going on the globalization stuff. Maybe they are right to have a control over their domains (as they SHOULD do, in my opinion). Maybe one day they will develop their tourism and will have to host websites on very important domains , related to them (on .ly). And I would not be surprised if they properly stop the renewal of some .ly domains in the idea to acquire them for themselves, in order to host art.ly, hostels.ly, etc... And you know, I would find it very _right_.
edit: I accept any downvote, no worries ! I know what I am saying here is completely against freedom regarding whoever wants to squat the .ly domains ! And I know I'm actually defending what they did, and that they don't have a good reputation. Personally I hate their president/king whatever because of what he did in the past, but that's not a reason to loose it on Libya, with some racist arguments I read here, just because they modified the way we see the domain rulings :)
I wonder what the currently owners of art.ly think about the statement?
So basically the domain registry of their domain don't really want them to own it (having already sold it to them) and would rather they had it back and could sell it to a local company.
Keep trying now and again; it seems to come and go. Just in case here is the current text:
NIC.ly rules and regulations were set by the local Libyan internet community (in accordance with best practices for ccTLDs) to reflect it’s identity and content. It’s a bottom up module in which the Community’s feedback, opinions and remarks are taken into decision-making consideration, and it is our duty to uphold these rules and regulations to serve the better interests of the community we represent.
In reference to the vb.ly incident: the domain’s purpose (proclaimed by its registrants themselves) was to serve as a ‘sex friendly URL shortener’, mainly for adult uses. This means that vb.ly had a policy different than the other URL shorteners, not using filters and encouraging the use of this service for creating links to adult sites and other “NSFW” links, thus placing vb.ly by definition in the porn/adult site category.
This use was deemed as unacceptable by our local internet community, regardless of whether or not the site hosts adult material or redirects traffic to 3rd party sites
Contrary to vb.ly’s claims, they were contacted on numerous occasions to investigate these concerns, and over the course of these contacts vb.ly has ignored our efforts and even changed their contact numbers.
When our repeated warnings were ignored, and after over 3 weeks of failed attempts to contact the owners of vb.ly, NIC.ly had no alternative but to apply its regulations that clearly state that it reserves the right to suspend or remove a .ly domain name in violation of rules and regulations. The domain has also been excluded from future registrations so that no other entity (local or abroad) can re-register it.
As to the decision to keep the registration of domain names shorter than 4 symbols long under .ly only for entities with a local Libyan presence, this comes in accordance with NIC.ly’s concern that the rise in popularity of URL shorteners from abroad taking up all these names has deprived locals of their right to register the important 3 letter abbreviations of their various businesses and interests. We as a Registry would prefer seeing art.ly used for a website about Libyan art for instance, or lda.ly used by the Libyan De-mining Association, rather than adding more URL shorteners under our National TLD.
For over 5 years, we as a Libyan Registry recognized by ICANN have been open for domain name registrations from all around the Globe, and we pride ourselves on being the online destination of thousands of domain names from all over the World. Over this span of time never once have we abused the trust invested in us by the Global internet community, nor have we ever taken advantage of having an attractive extension like ‘.ly’. Only when our Community's rules and regulations were compromised was when we had to act.
We had received other emails from them previously including our domain renewal notice just a month and a half before so I know they had a working email address for us and that we were receiving their other correspondence.
They've made out in their statement that we ignored their email - given how upset myself and Violet Blue have been over this I would urge people to consider whether these are the actions of two people who would intentionally ignore such a significant warning. Why would we do that?
I do, however, feel relieved that they will not be letting anyone else register the domain - we were concerned from a security perspective of someone else registering the domain and re-routing existing vb.ly links out there to insecure or spoofed websites.
(we hadn't highlighted this concern previously because we didn't want to give anyone ideas but now they have said the domain is 'locked' I'm happy to talk about that concern)