(I'm the [former?] owner of vb.ly and that's my blog post linked above)
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.
So I'm not American, so this isn't about imperialist America wanting everything to be in English.
The issue is the Libyans WANT international folks to buy their domains - they have all of the site in English, English-speaking pre- and post-sales support and even the domains themselves are sold in US$.
The issue I'm suggesting is that if you are going to put regulations up for the use of the domain that include needing to be in compliance with Libyan Law, it's quite unhelpful not to provide ANY resources or links to where I can read Libyan Law in English (ie the same language the website is selling the domain in).
As it happens I can't find any online resource for explaining to me the gist of Libyan Law in English.
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?
Well with that chain of thinking then bit.ly, and everyone who uses it, should be very worried. Thus I hardly think this is a "rant" as you later describe my post!
It's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'.
That's actually your somewhat judgmental opinion. Like I said, I'm not American so this "weird foreigners" remark is off-base.
Apart from the one mention of Americans using Twitter, I deliberately made a point of using 'Western'.
Also, the kind of xenophobia, intentional or not (note that I heavily implied it was not the result of conscious thought), that leads to the 'weird foreigners' attitude is in no way unique to America. I'd imagine there's just as much of it in London as there is in Edinburgh as there is in San Francisco.
Oh, and yes, bit.ly should be worried. They should've taken this into account when planning their business and doing risk assessment.
it's quite unhelpful not to provide ANY resources or links to where I can read Libyan Law in English
Even if they could give you their entire body of law (including court decisions!), there'd be sure to be translation errors, or laws which you can't understand without cultural context. Then they'd have people complaining about getting misled. The answer is to consult a Libyan lawyer.
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.
So I'm not American, so this isn't about imperialist America wanting everything to be in English.
The issue is the Libyans WANT international folks to buy their domains - they have all of the site in English, English-speaking pre- and post-sales support and even the domains themselves are sold in US$.
The issue I'm suggesting is that if you are going to put regulations up for the use of the domain that include needing to be in compliance with Libyan Law, it's quite unhelpful not to provide ANY resources or links to where I can read Libyan Law in English (ie the same language the website is selling the domain in).
As it happens I can't find any online resource for explaining to me the gist of Libyan Law in English.
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?
Well with that chain of thinking then bit.ly, and everyone who uses it, should be very worried. Thus I hardly think this is a "rant" as you later describe my post!
It's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'.
That's actually your somewhat judgmental opinion. Like I said, I'm not American so this "weird foreigners" remark is off-base.