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.'"

Comments

Their rules, their game

[OzPeter]

Seems fine to me. You don't have to play on their turf

Re:Different culture, different opinions

[OzPeter]

A lot of folk howled with laughter in Europe when middle America made a fuss about Janet Jackson

Actually to be fair a lot of people in the US also couldn't understand what the problem was. However those who complained about it had the louder voice.

Sharia is a bit of a red herring

[SteeldrivingJon]

If US states had top-level domains under their control, I can imagine quite a few that would try to do the same thing.

It's just conservative cultural mores, which come in all religious flavors. Libya doesn't want its domain used for sexual matters, Texas won't let you buy or sell vibrators, and I think some places still enforce the sabbath so that few businesses are open on Sunday. Connecticut doesn't allow take-out sales of alcohol on Sundays. Various localities in the US ban alcohol sales altogether. John Ashcroft covered up a public statue's boob with a curtain when he was AG.

Talking about sharia just puts it into "oooh, scary muslims! They're so alien and different!" territory.

Re:The Picture in Question

[OzPeter]

Well, that's the point. Cultures that think pictures of women who are "clad" (which is just a fancy word for "wearing clothes") are very probably suppressing their women.

And people from Brasil look at what the US norm is and shake their head. I have a female friend from Brasil, who after a business trip to the US she told me how she brought her normal Brasilian bathing suit and felt weird wearing it around Americans. The next trip she borrowed her mothers bathing suit because it was more modest and fitted in by US standards. So by your definition and her experience the US is suppressing its women. And dare I mention Prairie dresses?

Re:The Picture in Question

[OzPeter]

Values are completely different today, and no where is it more prevalent than religion.

Except that even within religions the accepted morality varies by geographic region. For example the morality of followers of Catholicism is widely different between such areas as Brasil, the US, Italy and Ireland. And thats not even getting into other branches of Christianity. That is why I said region and deliberately chose NOT to say Religion.

Re:The Picture in Question

[Moryath]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why you don't want to let any religion get their hands on your government - whether it's a nutjob cult set up by an early 19th century lunatic, a 7th century pedophile, or even a rather kindly gentleman whose major accomplishment was sitting on his ass under a tree for a month and a half.

Ultimately, we want to get religion out of government as much as possible. If something is universal - say, prohibitions on murder or theft - then we can certainly all agree to implement them in a secular manner. But I shouldn't be restricted from buying some beer on my one day off each week just because a bunch of fundamentalist shitheads think I should be wasting my morning praying to their sun god.

Re:The Picture in Question

[twidarkling]

This is the problem with religious types. It is possible to be ethical without being religious. Recognizing certain fundamentals about treating people fairly and intelligently does not require a mandate from a higher power, nor the promise of damnation for failing to live up to that ideal. Further, religion has perpetrated as many evils, if not MORE evils in the world than anything else. Multiple Crusades, for instance, or protecting pedophiles in the name of sparing the Church a tarnished name.

So yeah, get religion the fuck out of government. If you can't be ethical without religion, you are NOT an ethical person.