

Large Belarusian IT portal losing its .by domain over new law - hippich
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.tut.by%2Fit%2F428870.html&edit-text=&act=url

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salimmadjd
Having a dev a team there in Belarus I spent 4 months of that past 12 there.
This seems to be about pricing.

Because of the strong economic ties between Russia and Belarus, the sanctions
in Russia is also causing a huge devaluation on Belarusian currency.

My friends have been telling me of long lines at the banks to convert their
money to Dollar. To prevent the rush, starting today, there is a 30% tax on
converting your money to Dollar. Essentially a 30% devaluation of their
currency.

Since many things are imported in Belarus any currency devaluation effects the
price of goods, so people rushed to stores to buy anything they can (and now
I've been told the shelves are almost empty).

But here's another issue, prices seem to be control by the government. For
instance, when you go to restaurants all menus that have price on them, have a
stamp and signature (think of it like a notarized stamp). This is so
restaurants wont be able to increase the price as they wish.

From the google translation, it seems to me the online store started
increasing their prices to match the devaluated currency and the government
didn't like it. Because it contradicts their message on stability of their
currency. They might have done the same at a physical store in this case.

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zihotki
Belorussian here. Also there is a law which enforces you to sell 50% of
foreign currency you get from selling your goods or services abroad (a few
weeks ago it was only 30%). And that 30% fee you can not enlist into your
expenses to reduce the taxes. So the importers and many of exporters are
completely f*cked up. And today they went even further - the government
introduced a law which locks all prices in all shops or the shop will be
closed and the owner will have to pay a fine. Crazy times...

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throughTheWay
Original:
[http://news.tut.by/it/428870.html](http://news.tut.by/it/428870.html)

(just so that the URL doesn't get masked by translate.google.com)

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colinbartlett
Another reminder that you don't own domain names, you rent them. And the owner
can take it back at any time.

It's for this reason that solutions such as Namecoin and other decentralized
solutions are increasingly intriguing to me.

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avodonosov
+1 for the Namecoin reference. Thanks

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sam_lowry_
It is indeed not an IT portal, but an ecommerce website. Very similar to
Alibaba in its business model. Had a catalogue of every imaginable product and
the best ever search over it.

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hippich
This is not just ecommerce site, but news outlet (alot related to latest
technology news), classified ads, very large forum with a lot of members
actively using it, and catalogue of various products (mostly about
electronics). So e-commerce is just some part of it.

~~~
imissmyjuno
You seem to know what you're talking about. I've read up a few sources in
Russian, and all of them say there were breaches of law related to commerce
and the company was warned, but none of the articles actually mentions the
actual cause. One article ([http://euroradio.fm/ru/sayt-onlinerby-
isklyuchayut-iz-beloru...](http://euroradio.fm/ru/sayt-onlinerby-isklyuchayut-
iz-belorusskoy-domennoy-zony)) mentions showing prices on the site. Was the
site conducting ecommerce illegally, and are you not allowed to open up an
ecommerce site without prior registration with the government? I certainly
don't see anything about a 'new law' as the HN title suggests.

~~~
hippich
I don't believe onliner.by company was actually selling any of these products,
instead they provided a platform for belarusian companies to show their
prices, and make it possible to compare prices between companies.

This is very-very old project and I don't believe it had anything illegal
going on.

My personal suspicions are that it is more political issue, rather than doing
something illegal. Site was covering many news events, including showing off
'inefficiencies' of belarus government. I might be wrong tho.

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gesman
He smelled the problem long before it started but failed to implement a simple
remedy:

Creating 301 redirect to portal copy hosted in stable jurisdiction.

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anonymfus
IIRC it's illegal to provide paid services to Belarusians from sites hosted or
registered in other jurisdictions.

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avodonosov
Right, according to Указ №60
([http://ukaz60.net/node/7](http://ukaz60.net/node/7)). And domain name ought
to be .BY . On the other hand the penalty currently is about $300. But as
onliner.by is an aggregator/catalog for many web stores, every of them may be
a subject for that penalty, if they work through onliner.RU . And I am sure
the government can quickly increase the penalty cost.

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freemanoid
Migrated to [http://onliner.ru](http://onliner.ru)

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out_of_protocol
Actually alibaba-style catalog + gsmarena-arena-style product details catalog
+ IT News site + forum + other stuff. #2 site in the country

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guard-of-terra
Looks like it's an ecommerce site, not an IT-portal.

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zihotki
It's grown from being an IT into some very IT related. And although they have
some sort of a market there they still do a lot of reviews of various gadgets
and have very popular forum. And also it's worth mentioning that it is the
second top Blr portal.

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avodonosov
Isn't that typical for Belarus :)

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andrzejsz
Or even for many postcommunist countries

