Libya Takes Hard Line On Link Shortening Domains 354
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.'"
WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait, why the hell are people registering domains in Libya to shorten URLs?
They don't exactly have a history as a nice place [wikipedia.org] and they have been suspected in supporting terrorism.
WTF is Twitter doing running stuff through a domain registered in friggin' Libya?? Why not just run a couple through Iran or Myanmar while we're at it?
Re:The Picture in Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh, no. The accepted conception of 'scantily clad' in the US has changed dramatically in the last 100 years in the US, without as dramatic a change in religion. (The delta between ankle-length bathing costumes for women and Lady GaGa's outfits is a lot wider than the difference in US religious beliefs from 1910 to 2010.)
Re:Sharia is a bit of a red herring (Score:3, Interesting)
If US states had top-level domains under their control, I can imagine quite a few that would try to do the same thing.
I can imagine winning the lottery, that doesn't mean it's going to happen.
Re:The Picture in Question (Score:3, Interesting)
It even says that responsible christians and jews, will go to haven.
What about responsible neo-pagans?
Re:SSDD (Score:5, Interesting)
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. The island state of Niue Who owns the .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.
I knew the guy who helped establish and run the .nu domain. He's done a lot for the people of that island, and in so doing, he's had to respect the cultural predilections of his fellow islanders, who have been strongly influenced by evangelical Christian beliefs in recent years.
'Nu' means 'nude' in French and 'now' in Swedish. Guess which country the registrar focused on? Guess which one it had to defend against?
Revenues from the domain registrations went to provide free wireless Internet access to the entire island, and since then, the island has purchased XO laptops for every single school child, making them the first country to achieve 100% distribution (albeit for only 500 kids).
But over the years, the government has tried to get its hands on the profits, leading to successive disputes. If the .nu registrar didn't keep a squeaky clean reputation for that ccTLD, he would have been pilloried for his failure. I find it hard to imagine how arguments about Free Speech rights would have improved this particular situation.
Warning, long and meandering post ahead (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's look at day to day gun ownership. What are the two main reasons for owning guns in the United States? Self defense and the ability to overthrow the government if neccessary. Self defense is actually something where guns are a self-fulfilling prophecy: If everyone has guns then everyone has guns. In a country where gun laws have always been strict (such as Germany) most criminals won't carry them because a) getting them legally means getting the police's attention, b) getting them illegally is expensive and/or difficult and c) if the cops notice you have a gun you can be sure of their full attention; if they notice you do so illegally you're screwed.
So yes, strong gun laws from the beginning do create a society where non-gun defense methods aren't automatically outclassed. Plus, people aren't as likely to shoot you if they don't assume that you're going to shoot them. I lose the ability to deal as much damage (unless I get a permit and even then it's heavily restricted) but so does everyone else. Yes, organized crime does have guns but they're dangerous primarily because they're organized crime, not because of the guns.
As for overthrowing the government: One of the things the allies have taught us when they built modern Germany is that overthrowing the government is evil. If you intend to do so you're evil. Well, and we are fully aware that any insurrection not involving most or all citizens will probably be squashed anyway as modern armies have equipment modern civilians can't even dream of owning, gun laws or not. It's unlikely that a sympathizing billionaire would just happen to have a hundred air superiority fighters or state-of-the-art surface-to-air missiles in his bike shed.
Plus, what can you use guns for besides killing (or at least maiming)? Not much. I mean, a knife can double as a useful tool but if you use a gun as a tool you fully deserve the accident that will likely happen to you. Oh yeah, and hunting, which is just killing again. Since "KILLING IS BAD" is deeply ingrained in our minds we're not too keen on doing it. We do play violent video games but that's comparing a shooting range to running amok.
I guess the answer in a nutshell is that we place a very high value on human life. Taking it is something you do when you have absolutely no other option**. Thus devices with the primary purpose of killing people are something that doesn't belong in the hands of anyone but trained professionals (= soldiers, the police and permit holders; you don't get a permit easily over here).
Of course that also means that any gun not inside secure storage is presumed to be out of storage because the wielder intends to use it. Outside of a shooting club or a forest that pretty much means that the wielder is ready to kill someone. Since we're generally not ready to kill someone we tend to get nervous around someone who is.
Note that I don't see the situation through rose-tinted glasses. Strict gun control isn't automatically good. I was present when a burglar shot my brother in the leg and the strict gun laws worked against us - the gun looked kinda fake and it was much more likely to be a blank pistol***, thus we assumed it wasn't a threat and tossed the guy out the front door. Had we handled that guy differently my brother wouldn't have a metal plate in his leg today.
Then again, the burglar ran away after we tossed him out and he only shot when my brother took up pursuit; had he assumed we were a threat, he might have shot sooner. Such as when his gun was pointed at me. I'm really glad he found me non-threatening.
Every stance has its up