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.'"
Won't anybody stop this insanity and think of the adults who crave link-shortened pictures of "a scantily clad lady with some bottle in her hand"?
I wouldn't even call her 'scantily clad' but you can judge for yourself here.
My work here is dung.
Depends on what you consider moral or immoral in your culture.
A lot of folk howled with laughter in Europe when middle America made a fuss about Janet Jackson showing off her body during Superbowl one year, in mainland Europe you'll see advertising hoardings promoting perfume, moisturisers etc with half naked models and nobody even blinks. While on the other hand a lot of Europeans freak out at aspects of US gun culture that pass without comment across the Atlantic. All over the world people have different opinions on what is right and what is wrong.
You want to use a Libyan DNS, I guess you have to abide by Libyan rules.... A classic case of a global economy confronting local norms and attitudes. Who is right and who is wrong? how do you decide? (wish I had the answer but alas I don't.....)
Ah, good, thanks for the link, you'd think it would be something that would be incredibly obvious to include in the story, but apparently not.
I included it in my summary that I submitted a half hour before pickens but they selected his instead because mine was voted down to purple in firehose for some reason. Guess I wrote the wrong headline as I've got the same quotes he does plus the picture.
My work here is dung.
This type stuff has been going on for years. It is nothing new! I used to own xg.nu, on it I ran a large anon server averaging 3.5 million unique hits a month and 500,000 messages a day. .nu domain notified me that Anonymity was not permitted and took the domain back. Point is, this happens a lot more than it is reported. There is no real recourse for this, you live, learn, and move on.
The island state of Niue Who owns the
So, the US and NL and BE and DE etc governments have NOT sought out such control over the domains for their countries BUT this means nothing to you. That LY HAS sought out the control and uses it, is just the same as western countries NOT seeking such control and not using it.
An Islam-apologist, you are doing it great.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No, its not "more useful" to us. It's a stupid grammar hack that people think is funny. It's the FIPS 10-4 code for Libya -- https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_FIPS_country_codes -- and I'd argue that keeping with in FIPS and ISO standards is more "useful" than being able to have the domain going-swimming.ly or whatever stupid shit the kids are doing these days in goatse.cx-like fashion.