Slashdot Mirror
Libya Takes Hard Line On Link Shortening Domains
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that Libyan government has removed an adult-friendly link-shortening service from the web, saying that it fell afoul of local laws in a crackdown that could come as a blow to other url shortening services such as bit.ly, which is particularly popular on Twitter where all messages have to be limited to 140 characters. 'Other ly domains are being deregistered and removed without warning,' says Co-founder of vb.ly Ben Metcalfe. 'We eventually discovered that the domain has been seized because the content of our website, in their opinion, fell outside of Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law.' Alaeddin ElSharif from NIC.ly, the body that controls Libyan web addresses, told vb.ly co-founder Violet Blue that a picture of her on the website had sparked the removal. 'I think you'll agree that a picture of a scantily clad lady with some bottle in her hand isn't what most would consider decent or family friendly,' says ElSharif. '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." It is when you promote your site being solely for adult uses ... that we as a Libyan registry have an issue.'"
. Ew, cooties! Bunch of superstitious chauvinists need to grow the fuck up.
I'd much rather they died off without spreading their mindvirus to the next generation.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Who says the Islams need "liberating"? That's awfully presumptuous of you. This looks like a perfect case for the Prime Directive - don't interfere with the choices the voters made for themselves.
Oh and yes the process. Look at Islamic Turkey which has evolved to modern standards.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
i am not familiar with christian suicide bombers regularly killing hundreds (of mostly other christians)
Christians don't have to blow themselves up to kill hundreds of people at one go. They have the US military to do it for them.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Okay let's agree that neither of the groups have a right (I certainly didn't mean to imply that we have an inherent right to the .ly tld). How do you decide a conflict?
You can do it by voting. I'm pretty sure Libya is a smaller country than the US plus other English speaking populations.
You can do it by reasoning with principles. I'd say language use is a decent principle. The ly suffix is more useful to us than to them.
How would you choose to do it, that leads to them keeping .ly? Are you just arguing that what's done is done and no backsies? Seems childish.