We didn't receive any prior warnings. If you're, essentially, saying you don't believe me then that's your call.
I'm not sure what more I can do. Sad.
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.
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.
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.
See Google vs China and many other examples.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-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
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 note that the US government has seized a bunch of .com domains (see http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-and-megaupload-escape-dom... ),
See for instance:
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.
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.
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.
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?
It's not like non-Libyan ly domain owners are being all naughty and sneaking in and grabbing these domains when they shouldn't.