
The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe - gmurphy
http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe/
======
semanticist
While I'm as against Sharia law as the next privileged westerner/godless
heathen, I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really
amusing.

Why should a country's national ccTLD rules be in English? It's a domain space
for that country, not for making convenient short URLs for Americans to use on
Twitter.

Why would a country run under Sharia law want to allow services like bit.ly
and others to use their ccTLD to link to porn and other things they find
offensive? Why is there an automatic assumption that ccTLD rules should
conform to Western expectations?

The only explanation I can think of is that in the back of people's heads is
the idea 'it's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use
it'. Apart from not being true any more, I wonder how deeply that sort of
thinking affects other interactions online?

Or maybe I'm overthinking it all and this guy's just pissed off and ranting
because he lost his domain.

~~~
kloncks
I will only comment on your use of the term Sharia law. The term's widely
misunderstood, especially after the events in NYC this summer.

Just so that you know, Sharia "law" is just six principles:

1\. The right to the protection of life. 2\. The right to the protection of
family. 3\. The right to the protection of education. 4\. The right to the
protection of religion. 5\. The right to the protection of property (access to
resources). 6\. The right to the protection of human dignity.

That's it. At its base, eerily similar to the bill of rights. The term
"shariah law" is a misnomer, because shariah is not law, but a set of
principles.

Controversial laws like stoning people or requiring women to be totally
covered aren't in the Sharia. Those are custom interpretations by certain
sects. That's why say Islamic-based laws in Saudi Arabia are radically
different from those in Egypt.

Just thought I'd share that. It really irked me this summer when everyone was
throwing around arguments against "infecting the constitution with Sharia"
even though no one actually knows what Sharia is.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Is this at all representative of the way sharia exists in practice? Can you
provide, say, 5 examples of Islamic countries practicing sharia according to
this strict interpretation that aren't overwhelmed by the influence of
religous and ethnic traditionalism? If not then aren't you just arguing
semantics? If the way sharia is practiced conforms to a certain well
delineated set of patterns and that differs from some ideal definition of
sharia which is the correct definition?

~~~
azim
I think you're misunderstanding what is meant by Sharia. It is _not_ a strict
set of rules. Because of this, it is necessarily influenced by ethnic
traditionalism. Now if you're looking for western countries which have Sharia
courts, the United Kingdom and India are two which come to mind which allow
certain civil disputes to be resolved in Sharia courts.

~~~
jacquesm
For a Sharia court in the UK to have the power of law though the participants
in the case all first have to agree to that though, otherwise they don't have
a legal leg to stand on.

So it is only after you've voluntarily agreed to be bound that the court can
proceed.

------
jacquesm
And to add to all of that: If you register a local version of any domain, be
it .ly or anything else make sure that you understand that domains registered
as such are subject to both local laws and the whims of the TLD authority.

This is one of the reasons I've always stuck to .com, .net and .org, just
registering a .nl domain for example requires me to jump through all kinds of
hoops, and is more expensive to boot.

If you're registering a cutesy domain name because it worked for del.icio.us
please note that they eventually switched to the whole word. If you're doing
it because 'there are no good names available' then you need to get a bit more
inspiration somewhere, I've found it very easy to come up with domain names up
to last week, I can't imagine the situation has changed much since then.

~~~
vog
_> registering a .nl domain for example requires me to jump through all kinds
of hoops, and is more expensive to boot_

This is quite interesting, because in Germany we have the exact opposite.
Here, .de domains are preferable to .com/.net/.org, because .de domains are
cheaper, registered more quickly with less bureaucracy and provide better data
privacy for the domain holder.

~~~
jacquesm
In nl the TLD admin is called SIDN, which officially stands for Stichting
Internet Domeinregistratie Nederland, but the situation was/is so bad that
they got the nickname Stichting Internet Dominatie Nederland which stands for
something entirely different.

How it can be 'more quickly' then typing in a name in a form and clicking a
mouse is a mystery to me, what do you mean by that?

~~~
dfox
'more quickly' probably means that german domain registrators can directly
register .de domain (and send you an invoice for it, not bill your credit
card), while they use some middle-man for generic TLDs. This can cause various
unexpected problems.

------
pg
I think what really happened here is that someone at the Libyan domain
authority decided they wanted the name and made up a story in order to seize
it. I've heard of other cases of .ly names being confiscated, and for this
reason we advise YC startups not to depend on them.

~~~
swombat
Alternative explanation:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765420>

"Violet Blue is an adult site".

~~~
kaerast
Yes, and that's the reason given for this domain name being reclaimed.
Drinking alcohol and women showing bare arms are both illegal under Sharia
law, and the front page showed Violet Blue drinking beer and showing bare
arms. It's difficult for many foreigners to know exactly what is and isn't
legal under Sharia law, so it's difficult to know if a domain would be ok or
not.

However nic.ly are now also warning they don't allow ownership of short .ly
domains by foreigners, only Libyan nationals. This sounds to me like they want
more money or an excuse to take down domains they simply don't like, but is a
real problem if they ever decided they want in on the bit.ly action.

The vb.ly site owners keep claiming that the content may be adult but that the
domain name isn't. This is a weak argument in my mind, and I believe there's a
precedent of domain names registered exclusively for the act of malware
propagation being taken down.

~~~
jonhendry
Sharia law doesn't necessarily enter into it.

You can't sell dildos and vibrators in Texas, and it's not because of Sharia
law.

Hindu activists in India made death threats and stormed theaters because of a
film about a lesbian relationship.

Sharia law is not the only reason for repressive attitudes toward sex.

I mean, really. They're, what, 30-40 years behind the cultural norms of the
US, in this case? You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far
more likely that it's just cultural.

It wasn't that long ago in the US that nothing was open on Sundays.

~~~
alanh
> You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far more likely that
> it's _just cultural._ (emph. added)

Because cultural reasons are completely separate from religion? Religion is
the only reason people like to tell others what they can and can’t do in
private, _especially_ in a democracy like Texas, where it shouldn’t be
considered Constitutional to outlaw "dildos and vibrators."

~~~
jonhendry
A agree, but there's a tendency among some these days to tout the boogeyman of
sharia law. And there's an implication that there's something alien about
Libya, that being restrictive of sexual matter is somehow unique to sharia
law, that without sharia law Libya would be just like the US, and that
Christians wouldn't do anything similar.

Which is just nonsense. Conservatives are conservative. Libya did this thing,
and John Ashcroft covered up a statue's tit.

Bringing sharia into it is just buying into the latest thing pants-wetting
wingnuts are using to scare themselves.

~~~
alanh
Maybe I’m foolish, but I think that denying the involvement of sharia law buys
us nothing, but recognizing similarities with other conservative censorship
tendencies (e.g. in Christendom) — as you have — can be a enlightening.

------
dont-kill-me
So if someone posts a cartoon picture of muhammad, and shortens it through
bit.ly, will Libya pull the domain, and in the process break millions of other
shortened URLs?

<http://bit.ly/cartoon-muhammad>

~~~
jacquesm
The point here is not if they will, the point is that they can, and that
that's why it is silly to even start using a domain like that.

You don't put your business' fate in the hands of some third world countries
legislation/semi governments whims.

------
ErrantX
Culture clash... looking at the sites screenshot here:
[http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official-
vb-...](http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official-vb-ly-link-
shortener-seized-by-libyan-government.html) (NSFW) I can see how under strict
Islamic law that pic would be construed as "obscene, offensive and illegal".

I have... minimal sympathy with these people - a lot of the fault lies with
themselves for not understanding the rules, morals and society of the country
they were buying from.

I don't think that this generally makes .ly domains any more "unsafe".

(on the other hand; if this is an example of Libya deliberately creating rules
to seize domains that is another matter, but at least in this case the
complaint seems "legitimate" so we may have to wait and see)

~~~
jacquesm
That link is NSFW.

~~~
darklajid
Just to add some more amusement: Why the hell would that be not safe for work?

It's hard to state my question without ending up being dismissed as a troll,
but I'm deeply amused by different viewpoints related to sex between western
cultures. If I take a karma hit for that, so be it.

Anecdote: During the football (yeah, or soccer..) worldcup in Germany images
were all over the internet that showed a brochure, which was rumored to be
issued by the USA's department of foreign affairs for tourists joining the
event. One interesting "fact" about the german culture mentioned in there was
,that violence (on tv, online, etc) might be far less accepted over here and
might be felt offensive, while nudity/references to sex might offend the
traveller.

I never found out if these things were real, but comments like these remind me
of some interesting differences in cultures between states that otherwise
often end up being regarded similar in morale and grouped as "western
countries".

~~~
jacquesm
It's not safe for work because plenty of people reading HN do so from their
work during breaks and if they happened to be showing a page which has full-
frontal nudity on it, even by accident during work hours they could get fired
for that.

Your - or mine - morals don't enter in to it, it's just a fact of life. So
it's common courtesy to label links that are not safe for work as such.

It's no trouble at all and if it helps keep the Hacker News crowd employed
then I think that's a good thing to strive for.

~~~
darklajid
Oh well - sure. I didn't want to criticize (sp?) the habit at all. Nor did I
want to mock anyone's morale or ask for the removal of NSFW tags.

What you just described is just - in my little world - a tiny, little version
of the original problem discussed in the thread.

For a part of the world the service vb.ly was not safe for X (work, family,
whatever).

For a part of the world (as explained by you) the blog entry and its sexual
references/ads/etc are not safe for work.

I wanted to point out the parallels, which seem (mildly) funny to me.

I visited the link at work and I'm sure nobody would ever complain, let alone
_think_ about bad consequences for me. Not that I imply that it should be that
way or that this is in any way superior to different positions or morale
standpoints. It is just - different.

NSFW is in that regard a kind of a lowest common denominator (sp?), tagged on
links with good intentions for sure. But using the lowest common point means
also that we put a label on something that might be excessive/overly
protective to others. I guess I cannot explain my feeling about these
similarities in judgement, inparticular around sex/nudity/pornography, any
better, sorry.

Short version: I don't question the "NSFW". I want to remind the readers that
the reasons why this is necessary in the first place are an interesting
thought in light of this discussion.

~~~
ErrantX
There is, I think, an important distinction, now that you have raised the
point.

In that the application of Sharia law makes a moral judgement on the content -
censoring it for the promotion of, in their eyes, illegal content.

In a work environment many things are not appropriate; even in the most
liberal of societies pornography is much more of a private thing, enjoyed by
smaller groups of people rather than being shared with the world at large.
There are also other issues; like, for example, that pornography is connected
with sexual excitement and sexual acts - all of which are also socially
inappropriate in most workplaces (and public). So rather than a moral
judgement it is a practical limitation designed to avoid awkwardness, or
offence or distraction.

That link, in particular, is a marginal case, where the pornography is
incidental to the reason for being on the page. But within a corporate
structure that doesn't matter.

For what it's worth, no one will blink an eyelid where I work either.

------
andybak
Am I the only person hoping that a high profile URL shortener liky bit.ly get
taken offline so people learn quickly that redirecting their content's URLs
through a 3rd party is a bad idea?

~~~
seldo
Redirecting your content through a third party like Amazon Web Services? Or
Akamai CDN? Or Rackspace?

All small- to medium-size websites are the result of dozens of third party
companies -- server farms, network backbones, DNS providers -- working
together. Even the really gigantic sites like Google and Yahoo, who really do
own their whole networks and all their hardware, use third party services
extensively.

In the case of a third-party URL shortener, the other party's presence is more
visible but no more intrinsically unreliable. And in fact, in this instance,
the redirector itself didn't go down -- what "broke" was the DNS provider,
namely NIC.ly.

~~~
ianhawes
You're correct that traditional content is routed through a ton of different
companies, and that anyone of them can fail, but using bit.ly is essentially
pointless, as it just tacts on another service that must be relied on.

In 10 years when bit.ly is completely dead, 2/3rds of the tweets or other
comments on the web will be rendered useless.

~~~
seldo
People complain about this a lot, but the rate of link-rot of ordinary URLs is
much, much greater than people believe. I run a URL shortener, and I can
assure you that while all of our links still work, huge numbers of the pages
they point to no longer exist.

The problem is also overstated because nearly all URL shorteners (bit.ly
included) are sending HTTP 301 responses. This means that the short link is
_never_ indexed; only the original link is. So shorteners have no effect on
pagerank/search results, which is where the longevity of pages is important
(since anything not published in the very recent past is mostly discovered by
search).

------
jrockway
This is what your firewall is for. If the IP is from Libya, send the packets
to the web server that hosts the "Libya is excellent!" page. If it's from the
country that your users are in, show them the real content.

Technical solutions to social problems sometimes work :)

~~~
borism
of course Libya is a mythical country behind mountains higher than Himalayas
and has no diplomatic missions anywhere in the world nor are it's officials
able to travel let alone Google "violet blue".

------
stevefink
I still don't get the recent trend of startups branding their businesses
around .ly and .io. I suppose it's similar to any "hip" trend, such as
gradients and rounded corners, but it always seemed legally risky to me.

~~~
jfager
Why does .io seem legally risky to you? The British Indian Ocean Territory is
currently a British protectorate, and the two countries that otherwise claim
the islands are Mauritius and the Seychelles, both of which are peaceful and
democratic.

~~~
limmeau
<http://www.nic.io/rules.html> states that you may not host content under a
.io domain if it is against the statutory laws of _any_ nation.

------
po
_It should be noted that all vb.ly links still exist but do not function at
this time. We have the database intact, and will restore your shortened URLs
momentarily with a suitable domain._

It's nice that they're doing that but it's essentially worthless. The url's in
the database have no value, it's the ones spread all over other people's
servers, and the work that went into doing it that have value.

------
tlb
If you hand a government complete power over a critical resource, and you or
your peers don't vote for that government, you will regret it.

The historical parallel to oil is not lost on Libya. Before 1850 or so, oil
was just a nuisance mineral. When the West developed applications for it,
Libya's territory, formerly a desert, was now worth trillions. Oil is now 95%
of Libya's exports, and probably 95% of their international power too.

Libya's government evolved to defend and exploit natural resources, and
they've historically done very un-democratic things to further that goal. So
please, don't hand them the keys to your startup.

------
rabble
I'm not sure if this is a real change to the nic.ly policy or not. It's
tricky. They say it was adult content. While vb.ly might not have had any, it
was co-owned by Violet Blue, who while she is many wonderful things, she is
not islamic.

Violet Blue's Website: <http://www.tinynibbles.com/>

It's not just Libya, the US govt which has ultimate control over .com, .org,
.net, .us, .gov, etc... also has some crazy ideas. Just look at how the senate
last week wanted to start revoking domain names willy nilly.

~~~
retube
Whether or not adult content was physically hosted by vb.ly or not is really a
technicality. If the link results in porn in your browser window...

~~~
jrockway
I guess they block Google, then?

~~~
DougWebb
They would probably block google.ly, or at least filter it.

~~~
logic
You mean <http://www.google.com.ly/> ?

------
jff
Cutesy domain names considered harmful.

As somebody pointed out earlier in the thread, del.icio.us was really a
terrible name. When you try to say it out loud (or even think it in your head)
it comes out as "dell dot icky-o dot us"; the whole "oh, that's cute, it
spells delicious" is pretty shortlived. delicious.com is way easier to say and
looks better.

The same thing goes for your personal sites. bob.jon.es sounds pretty stupid
when you try to tell somebody "Just go to bob dot jon dot es" or "bob dot
j-o-n dot e-s".

Just say no to cutesy domain names. bobjones.net, not bob.jon.es;
delicious.com, not del.icio.us.

------
mmaunder
This reminds me of the current Dubai commercial property crisis. During the
boom, everyone bought property without asking if there was a legal framework
for resolving disputes. Now that there's a bust, investors are finding Dubai's
opaque property laws make it very difficult to resolve disputes and get your
money out.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibui...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibuild.html?_r=1)

You bought virtual commercial real-estate in Libya and now you're finding you
are subject to local law and bureaucracy.

Google's bet on the Greenland TDL with goo.gl is less risky but I'd be
interested to see what their lawyers had the local government and ccTLD admins
agree to.

------
joshu
I'm reasonably sure I predicted this: <http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on-
url-shorteners.html>

------
njharman
> it sets a precedent that all websites running on a .ly domain must comply
> with Libyan Islamic/Sharia

Given that Libya is a sovereign nation __and __.ly is their TLD, not a
playground for you to create cute domains that seems 110% reasonable.

~~~
jdminhbg
Reasonableness is orthogonal to dangerousness. It's reasonable that playing
with a wild grizzly bear might end in serious injury.

~~~
njharman
Fair enough, and true.

I was more responding to the entitled and shocked tone that someone(entity)
would act in their self interests even when they, OMG!, conflicted with petty
interests of "your" own.

I also have a serious twist in my nickers over abusing TLDs to get cutesy
domain names.

I also have a very serious twist about people who go out of their way to
violate custom / abuse a system and then whine about when it doesn't work just
they way they want.

------
ig1
It's slightly funny how lots of Americans are complaining about Libya's rules
for .ly, but have obviously never read the rules for .us which are in many
aspects worse.

------
donohoe
When I was suggesting domain names for the NYTimes short URL this was a major
concern. I'm sorry to see it actually happen.

------
FraaJad
I would like to draw attention to the fact that US had economic embargo on
Libya till 2004(?) and even today there are many items that cannot be exported
to Libya.

So, when your government (assuming the entrepreneur in question is American)
classifies Libya as a dangerous state, it might be prudent to avoid building
your identity over the domain names provided by Libya... don't you think.

I remember this only because Oracle made me click a check box agreeing not to
export any of their software to these "axis of evil" countries.

------
ladon86
I have two 3-letter .ly domains. Do you think it's a bad idea to use them for
anything serious now?

~~~
atlbeer
Everything in business has a risk associated with it. Domain names are not
excluded from that analysis.

The risk with .ly domains has been discussed before. This is just evidence
that the risk exists and this evidence should be used to recalculate that
risk.

As mentioned in a similar reply in this thread a Plan B should be considered.
Any sufficiently large website or business should have some disaster recovery
plans, regardless and this is just another page that needs to be created for
that plan

What a Plan B for a domain name is? I'm not quite sure but, del.icio.us
delicious.com is an example.

------
merrick
I wouldn't panic yet as a .ly domain owner:

"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’. Now, had your domain merely been a URL shortener for
general uses similar to bit.ly (as you claim) there would have been no problem
with it. It is when you promote your site being solely for adult uses, or even
state that you are ‘adult friendly’ to promote it that we as a Libyan Registry
have an issue."

There is definitely some risk, so mitigate it and buy the ly.com variant of a
.ly domain to protect against this - much like ad.ly owns adly.com, embed.ly
owns embedly.com.

Watch what bit.ly does - likely nothing right now. If they get warning like
vb.ly says they did, we will hear about it, and then every .ly owner has a
problem.

------
devmonk
'You may also not know that since June 2010 .ly domains less than 4 characters
long may no longer be registered by anyone who isn’t in Libya which suggests
there is tension around foreign owned, high-value, short .ly domains.'

What about bit.ly?

Registrant: bit.ly Jessica McVea 416 West 13th Street New York NY United
States Zip/Postal code: 10014 Phone: 6468398575

Domain Name: BIT.LY

Created: 2008-05-18 14:50:12 Updated: 2010-03-09 18:25:33 Expired: 2011-05-18
14:50:12

Domain servers in listed order: ns4.p26.dynect.net ns3.p26.dynect.net
ns2.p26.dynect.net ns1.p26.dynect.net

Domain Status: ACTIVE

------
Figs
Why do we even have all these stupid country specific domain extensions?
Countries are not permanent entries; they come and go. What happens when a
country ceases to exist, gets invaded, has a civil war...? What on earth is
the benefit of having dozens and dozens of domain extensions, except to
confuse people and force them to pay endless amounts for every possible
misspelling of your domain? (Seriously, who the hell thought that a .cm domain
extension was a good idea?!)

------
jinushaun
Finally. I was wondering when somebody was going to crack down on all those
.ly domain names. Web 2.0 startups with their cute domain names tend to forget
that those TLDs are actually controlled by someone. I remember a while back
when Italy started restricting .it domain names because so many Americans were
registering .it domain names.

Funny how many on here complain about Libya and their sharia requirement
instead.

------
bjonathan
Site is down, you can read the article with Bing's cache:
[http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.co...](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.com%2fblog%2f2010%2f10%2fthe-
ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe%2f&d=879317483757&mkt=fr-
FR&setlang=fr-FR&w=38a5245,e3cc4722)

------
grandalf
I made an adult themed URL shortener pr0n.ly and they ended up canceling the
registration b/c it violated islamic law. They said that the problem was the
domain name, though, not the content, and issued me age.ly instead (which I
still haven't re-branded)

------
sigzero
bit.ly is not gonna like that!

------
zumda
I don't understand why he is so upset about the rule that three letter domain
names are blocked. He should move to Switzerland, here you can't register
domain names shorter than 3 letters.

~~~
jacquesm
You can, actually. Just not in the .ch TLD.

------
oshane
[http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia-
law-o...](http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia-law-on-ly/)

------
waxman
Ask HN: Do you think bit.ly should be worried? Do you think they could
feasibly switch to a backup url (like j.mp) without totally killing their
service?

~~~
seldo
I don't know if this is common knowledge, but all bit.ly-powered domains are
actually mirrors of each other, so <http://bit.ly/bdMwyV> and
<http://j.mp/bdMwyV> automatically go to the same place. This would make such
a switch technically simple, but obviously you'd still break all the old
bit.ly-domain links.

------
joyous
You can shove your URL shorteners <http://ana.ly/>

~~~
afed3
Thanks, reporting that one too.

------
ZLOK
qoiob.com uses shorter (1 char) and more stylish (symbols) domain names (and
also works fine with Tweetdeck and other auto-shortening tools) <http://✰.ws/>

------
adelevie
What would happen to Twitter if Bit.ly got disrupted?

~~~
Kilimanjaro

      REPLACE 'bit.ly' with 'tw.it' WHERE tweet CONTAINS 'bit.ly'
    

or something like that

------
afed3
I've reported bit.ly to Libya, hopefully it'll be taken offline soon.

------
efutch
HN should register under the .hn domain

------
vital101
_In Short:_

This made me chuckle.

------
ergo98
Slightly offtopic, I know, but the use of "contest" in the post confused me.

For instance-

"Again, while we contest that there was NO pornography or adult material on
vb.ly," ...

(It is used in that manner several times)

That statement is essentially saying that they disagree that there was no
pornography, or in essence that they agree that there was.

To contest something means to disagree with it.

------
borism
surprise surprise

~~~
borism
no seriously, what part of Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya you
didn't get?

------
andreross
All the Lybians did now was scare American and other Western entrepreneurs
from getting anywhere near their domain. I was about to have my new startup
set up with .ly domain, but now I will move to a much friendlier .it domain
(in fact, I would stay away from any Muslim country domain, just in case,
including .io).

Those who say "oh, we don't own the Internet, how arrogant of us to even think
we do..." I want to tell you one thing - yes, you can shove those Sharia
countries domains to <http://ana.ly>. We do OWN the internet, because it is us
who create the Internet. This Lybian Alshariff, or whatever his name is,
thinks that because his government thinks that those domains are valuable
THATS a reason good enough to confiscate and block them from our use. Ok,
fine, do it, moron. The only problem is – once you do something as stupid as
this you scare all the people AWAY from your domains, making them literally
worthless. When they will realize it it will be too late – once scared people
of business do not come back.

~~~
jacquesm
What a terribly shortsighted comment.

> We do OWN the internet, because it is us who create the Internet.

That's a pretty serious mis-statement of fact right there. You don't OWN the
internet because it was 'you' (whoever that is) that created it.

The internet is a connection of networks, each of those networks could operate
by itself, the fact that we've partitioned the address space in a way that
allows us to route packets from 'sharia' ruled countries to the United States,
Europe, Asia, Latin America and all of the EU is to our mutual benefit.

To suggest that you 'can shove those Sharia countries domains...' is to add
insult to injury, nobody there asked for American and EU entrepreneurial types
to buy these domains and use them, they are primarily intended for use by
those countries nations. To muddy the intentions of TLDs is a questionable
practice, how would you feel if Wallmart started to sell stuff under a .edu
domain?

Those domains are not worthless, they just are what they are, regional TLDs,
specifically with the intent to enable each country to govern their own TLD as
they see fit.

Please _also_ notice that .us is the regional domain for the United States,
and not .com , and that it too has its own set of rules.

~~~
wrs
Any country that opens up its national TLD is in fact explicitly asking
outsiders to "buy these domains and use them". Indeed, many national TLDs are
marketed mostly to non-nationals. The government of Tuvalu apparently makes 10
percent of its revenue from the .tv domain (and wishes it had a better deal
with Verisign so that was even larger). It is surely important to the
countries who make this choice to maintain good relations with the "American
and EU entrepreneurial types". Otherwise why did they bother?

~~~
jacquesm
For the most part it is the registrars that enable this, the domain
authorities are not actively stopping foreigners from buying these domains but
you can't take that as an encouragement from their end. The simple fact that
the terms of service are not available in English is quite a hint imo.

And they bothered because they like money, but if the downsides are too much
for their sensibilities (with which you are free to disagree, as do I) they
can make your life miserable. Just like you're not going to be mooning anybody
in downtown Singapore it probably isn't smart to host an adult site on a
predominantly Muslim country TLD.

