A Little Bit.ly Sharia? Tech Business Builds on Libya Domain « Creeping Sharia

via creepingsharia.wordpress.com

In other words, as Gawker titled their story: Muammar Qaddafi More or Less Owns Your Links. Astute reporting below from a blog entitled Workbench:

Bit.ly Builds Business on Libya Domain

The URL shortening service Bit.ly just secured $2 million in financing from investors including O’Reilly’s AlphaTech Ventures. Though URL shorteners have been around for years, Bit.ly believes there’s money in offering Twitter-friendly short links along with web analytics to track how the links are used. The company reports that its links were clicked 20 million times last month.

So far, the news coverage I’ve read about Bit.ly has neglected an unusual aspect of the startup: It’s one of the only prominent online ventures using a domain name in the .LY namespace, which is controlled by Libya.

There are two issues that arise from this relationship.

First, of course, is the appearance of an American company doing business with Libya, a country that the U.S. considered a state sponsor of terror from 1979 through 2006. On Dec. 21, 1988, Libyan intelligence agents planted a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 that blew up 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people onboard.

Bit.ly’s only doing a trivial amount of business with Libya — the domains sell for $75 per year from the registrar Libyan Spider Network — but its use of .LY domain is helping to popularize and legitimize the top-level domain for general use on the Internet. It’s only a matter of time before a reporter decides to ask the families of Lockerbie victims what they think of the arrangement. I can’t imagine that story going well for the company.

Even without that PR hit, there’s another potential concern for Bit.ly and any other venture that builds its business on an .LY domain. These domains are governed by Libyan law, as it states on the Libyan Spider Network site:

Any .LY domain names may be registered, except domains containing obscene and indecent names/phrases, including words of a sexual nature; furthermore domain names may not contain words/phrases or abbreviations insulting religion or politics, or be related to gambling and lottery industry or be contrary to Libyan law or Islamic morality.

So the names must conform to Islamic morality, and it’s possible that the use of the domains could fall under the same rules. What are the odds that some of those 20 million clicks on a Bit.ly-shortened URL end up at sites that would be considered blasphemous or otherwise offensive in an Islamic nation? Bit.ly conveniently provides search pages for such topics as Islam, sharia, gambling and sex, any of which contain links that could spark another controversy.

Bit.ly’s building a business atop a domain that could be taken away at any time, and the company’s only recourse would be to seek redress in the Libyan court system. Take a look at Section 11 of the regulations for .LY owners:

The Arabic language is the language of interpretation, correspondence and the construction of the Regulation or anything related to it. … In case of conflict between the Arabic and the English versions the Arabic version shall prevail.

I hope Bit.ly’s attorneys are brushing up on their Arabic. ~end

More from Domain Name Wire:

Is it wise to run a web service using a questionable country code domain?

I’ve warned about the dangers of country code top level domains. Rogers Cadenhead made some interesting observations about Bit.ly, a URL shortening service that just scored $2M in funding.

You see, .ly is the country code for Libya, which has a not-so-great history with the United States. He also points out some of the rules attached to country code domains. I’ve written before about .AE for United Arab Emirates that restricts uses within Muslim law. There’s no poker.ae, for example. The same thing goes for .ly. This presents a problem since the Bit.ly service let’s you forward to just about any web site with any topic. Technically the content isn’t hosted on a .ly domain, but the danger is there that Libya would lay the hammer on this.

No serious business should use a country code domain name other than a major, unrestricted domain without special content rules.

Update: Twitter’s selection of bit.ly is demise of popular URL shortening service tr.im:

tr.im is now in the process of discontinuing service, effective immediately.

Statistics can no longer be considered reliable, or reliably available going forward. However, all tr.im links will continue to redirect, and will do so until at least December 31, 2009.

Your tweets with tr.im URLs in them will not be affected.

We regret that it came to this, but all of our efforts to avoid it failed. No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount.

There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening — users won’t pay for it — and we just can’t justify further development since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner. There is simply no point for us to continue operating tr.im, and pay for its upkeep.

We apologize for the disruption and inconvenience this may cause you.

(there’s money in tr.im somewhere – how about an auction?)

Another update: Feedback from tr.im users convinced them to continue the service.

Posts about Gawker as of April 1, 2009 » The Daily Parr Says:

April 1, 2009 at 9:34 AM
[...] about Gawker as of April 1, 2009 A Little Bit.ly Sharia? Tech Business Builds on Libya Domain – creepingsharia.wordpress.com 04/01/2009 In other words, as Gawker titled their story: Muammar [...]


Jewish Internet Defense Force Says:
April 19, 2009 at 12:49 PM
Thinking we should get Tweet Deck to remove it from their URL shortening options through a campaign possibly. Also, perhaps an automated Tweet to everyone who uses bit.ly on Twitter that they shouldn’t use it, and why.


CO2 HOG™ Says:
April 20, 2009 at 12:48 AM

dividend Says:
June 1, 2009 at 3:09 PM
think we should also ban the english suffix -ly. it’s too adverb-y, and who know how those unpredictable adverbs are gonna modify…


Libya OWNS Your Shorten Links « ~Pop Culture Menace!~ Says:
September 26, 2009 at 10:39 PM
[...] Libya OWNS Your Shorten Links 2009 September 26 tags: bit.ly, Libya, Sharia Law used on internet links by popculturemenace The most used link shortener for sites such as Twitter is http://bit.ly Even I used it more than any other link shortening service out there. However, I had a huge change of heart when I came across this article: A Little Bit.ly Sharia? [...]


Libya OWNS Your Shorten Links « ~Pop Culture Menace!~ Says:
September 26, 2009 at 10:41 PM
[...] Libya OWNS Your Shorten Links 2009 September 23 tags: bit.ly, Libya, Sharia Law used on internet links by popculturemenace The most used link shortener for sites such as Twitter is http://bit.ly Even I used it more than any other link shortening service out there. However, I had a huge change of heart when I came across this article: A Little Bit.ly Sharia? [...]


A Little Bit.ly Sharia? Tech Business Builds on Libya Domain « Creeping Sharia « Simon Studio Analysis Says:
November 30, 2009 at 10:21 AM
[...] I hope Bit.ly’s attorneys are brushing up on their Arabic. ~end via creepingsharia.wordpress.com [...]


Un:dhimmi Says:
December 11, 2009 at 1:22 AM
I mailed Robert Spencer and others about this aeons ago. I was ignored.

I use tr.im (Isle of Man) with kl.am (Armenia) as a backup for my URL shortening.

Together they spell ‘Imam;’ LOL

Using Bit.ly supports Jihadis « Avid Editor’s Insights Says:
December 15, 2009 at 8:09 AM
[...] Even with more info from Creeping Sharia [...]


teksquisite Says:
December 16, 2009 at 7:21 PM
I was not aware of this and will be using a different service ASAP.

Knowledge is power

/Bev


Frugal Dougal Says:
December 21, 2009 at 9:01 PM
Possibly people are letting Twitter shorten URL’s with bit.ly because they don’t know how to use URL shorteners – this was the case with me until I was told.


teksquisite Says:
December 21, 2009 at 9:56 PM
“I mailed Robert Spencer and others about this aeons ago. I was ignored.”

The Robert Spencer site is all about the Great Robert Spencer and donating money…


Elisse Says:
December 27, 2009 at 2:09 AM
We use http://www.wvurl.com as our shortener here in West Virginia. trust it’s not connected tos omething ghastly, too…


AmasNevy Says:
December 27, 2009 at 9:31 PM
There is American Oil Companies doing billions of dollars deals with the libyan gov and i bet the gas that you are using to drive your car to work today is imported from libya

Why you people making a big deal of this


Bigbrovar Says:
January 9, 2010 at 2:29 AM
scare mongering. you forgot to add how much the families of the Lockerbe Bombing got, a million dollars each to moan their loved ones.


fred Says:
January 12, 2010 at 4:18 PM
Rate This

This article inspired us to survey webmasters to find out their feelings about bit.ly, ow.ly and other rogue country domains. Our report is here: http://4wrd.us/ahox


creeping Says:
January 12, 2010 at 5:06 PM
Thanks Fred. Interesting survey.


Naomi Litvin Says:
January 18, 2010 at 12:44 AM
I have cited your bit.ly article on my latest post on my blog.

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Naomi Litvin


Jerry2665 Says:
January 18, 2010 at 10:43 PM
http://tinyurl.com/create.php This one works good


Rex Dixon Says:


January 24, 2010 at 11:42 AM
Let’s all get facts before we post and stir up people to knee jerk reactionary type of action.

First and foremost – we would appreciate you asking Bit.ly directly before you go out and post on your site about Bit.ly and our supposed conspiracy theorized type of Libyan connection.

Here below are the most common Q&A concerning Bit.ly and Libya. Please feel free to engage us in dialog via our direct support channel which is – support@bit.ly – We are way to busy with actual work, and keeping the billions of bit.ly urls running live than to engage in a discussion via this or any blog, but we feel since a concerned member of our community took the time to e-mail us, that we would respond here directly. Please direct any further questions to the address above.

Thank you.

–Why did you pick the name bit.ly?

We picked the name bitly because it’s short and it is evocative of small bits, loosely coupled, a theme at betaworks. Bit.ly is a shorter url than bitly.com, which we also use, and echoes the name of several micro-blogging services like present.ly, song.ly and near.ly.

To purchase the domain, we paid $75 to an online registrar accredited by ICANN, the international nonprofit that governs internet domains and naming, which is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, here in the US of A.

–Are you confident the site will be safe?

ICANN signed an accountability framework with Libya Telecom and Technology in March 2007, which sets out the telephone company’s (LTT’s) obligations as a registrar for the .ly domain and provides an internationally-accepted mechanism for dispute resolution.

ICANN sets a standard for responsibility and reliability, and we have confidence in their framework.

We’ve also got a tremendous confidence in our engineering team, which has built a redundant, secure, highly-scaleable site. Every single bit.ly short url also exists as a bitly.com page.

–Do you have any issues doing business in Libya?

We don’t do business in Libya, but it’s worth noting that on May 31, 2006 the United States reopened the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, a step the State Department described as marking “a new era in U.S.-Libya relations.”

creeping Says:
January 24, 2010 at 12:58 PM
Rex Dixon,

If you are from bit.ly your response if more than disappointing.

First and foremost, the story came from sites including Gawker, Workbench, and Domain Name Wire – none of which you chose to leave a comment on.

In none of those stories nor here did anyone even come close to suggesting any type of “conspiracy” between bit.ly and Libya. To even suggest so is the purest of propaganda and obfuscation.

Further, no one ever suggested that your site was not secure either. But again, that is not the issue. Nor is the issue doing business in Libya, as you and other commenters suggested.

We posted the information in April 2009 and your are now responding, proving that you are clearly NOT too busy with your billions of Libyan-domain-named short URL’s to formulate a comment that does nothing to address the issues brought up by the various sources.

While you may not want your users and the general public to know that the .ly domain name is a Libyan controlled domain and disputes are potentially subject to Islamic morality law – which is completely opposed to the U.S. Constitution – other sites and blogs chose to share that information.

Users can make up their own mind based on the totality of information and potential risk.

If bitly were to unequivocally announce it will support and defend any bitly user who in the future might face legal action from a knee-jerk reaction from Libya as a result of a bitly url containing content that is “contrary to Libyan law or Islamic morality” then skeptics might have more confidence (that would apply to any business using the Libyan domain).

Just like citizens have the option to vote/note vote for politicians who make policy decisions they don’t agree with (such as removing Libya from state sponsors of terror list), they also have the option of choosing which technology services they use.


Paul W. Swansen Says:
January 24, 2010 at 1:10 PM
A great story on how business gets done.


Noah David Simon Says:
January 24, 2010 at 1:33 PM
it is amusing to me that one of the comments here compared a url shortner to petroleum. Data that can be co-opted and abused should never be compared to a raw resource.

via creepingsharia.wordpress.com

L.A. Times to Bump Breaking News

Now maybe these newspapers will learn a little about providing a news slant that reflects the people’s concerns and not enable the bad guys… probably not… they will go out of business first

The paper’s publisher Eddy Hartenstein struck the deal with News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch to print the Wall Street Journal’s west coast edition in the plant instead, a spokesperson confirmed.

According to two well-placed individuals, the decision to close the Orange County plant means that the Journal will take up the late print run on the Times’ one remaining plant.

That in turn has meant sacrificing news for the L.A. Times front page. The front page will now close at 6 p.m. instead of 11 p.m. and midnight, as has been the case until now.

Late-breaking news will go into a new supplement section.

The deal to print the Journal has been under discussion by Hartenstein and Murdoch — who know each other from Hartenstein’s stint at DirectTV — for some time. The paper already delivers the Journal. And the additional cash it represents apparently required the Times to allow a print run to accommodate the Journal’s late-breaking news.

Had the Times gotten the contract to print the Orange County Register, the printing plant there might not have had to close, and the issue could have been avoided.

None of this was evident in Hartenstein’s announcement on Thursday that late-breaking news would move from the front page to a new section.

In his memo to the staff, Hartenstein spun the decision as part of measures aimed at “streamlining” the paper, with no mention of how this might impact the effectiveness of the paper to report the news.

via aim.org

it is more likely that the Times needs to get a bunch of Corporate sponsors to grease the concerns of these companies right into the editorial. the immediate reaction is that sounds like Capitalism, but to give you an example about having no advertising and only corporate sponsorships you need to look no further then NPR and PBS. News Corp doesn’t need Corporate sponsorship because they have advertising that doesn’t sway editorial. ironically what we consider to be “left” and “progressive” is just appealing to the internationalist corporations that hate America as much as our worst enemies. just look at GE’s former relationship with MSNBC and NBC if you don’t get where I am going with this. those liberal newspapers were only liberal when it came to selling the people on self hate. that is the amusing part about all of this… what the dumb lemmings really consider to be liberal is nothing but “public relations”. sure sounds good and doesn’t offend… and says things like Muslims aren’t violent by the Quran, but they are only attempting to make digestible places to control minds to push their products. advertising between the news is less influential then direct sponsors.

Why doesn’t FOX News have a competitor?

Question: if FOX News is so profitable and is America’s favorite News, then why isn’t there a competitor?

Answer: because the profit from NEWS doesn’t come from advertising. the NEWS is public relations for internationalist corporations who profit from American weakness and growth in foreign markets and labor. MSNBC and CNN might look like commercial enterprises, but they aren’t as concerned with advertising revenue as they are with brainwashing you into subservience. more debt makes your voice weak. keep on spending on those well intending social programs. by the time America figures out what is up we won’t have a voice.

I believe the press is the press because it is profitable. I believe FOX is alone because it is not. the part of FOX that makes money is the tabloid part of it. the Hollywood gossip. and CNN is eating away at that with the new incarnation of Headline News and Nancy Grace. Right Wing only can profit from advertising and that is the least profitable part of a new network. NBC served as propaganda for General Electric until this was exposed and it proved unprofitable to be associated. profit in the news exists for public relations to government. Time Warner and CNN have to do business with government to lay their wires down… same with the present owners of NBC which is now Comcast. Fox has stayed away from that business plan by excelling in the Satellite programming business. it is only a matter of time before AT&T and Verizon attempt to get their own propaganda unit.

Diversions

What did you think about the hearing on the future of journalism?

Click to Play

http://new.seesmic.com/threads/u1KswBsMH8 taken from a Seesmic thread
why the media is failing. an analysis and an example.

Rock The Vote ….Blech

Politics and the Rock or Pop Star. In 2004 “Rock the Vote”, was supposed to bring out the Democrats. Puff Daddy and others in a music video like shoot and promotion were supposed to bring out the young set. Unfortunately the group failed to do segment marketing to figure out who the actual viewers on youth Television were. “Rock the Vote” ended up bringing more conservatives to the polls then otherwise, and while they watched P Diddy they certainly didn’t take his politics as they’re own. In what should of been an easy election for Kerry (between being funded by George Soros and Bush’s stolen election accusations) It ended up being a loss because the entertainment industry forgot they’re own bullshit. Youth voting has actually declined since “Rock the Vote” has been in existence. Only in 1992 did youth voting increase upward from its continuing downward descent, but so did all other age groups that year. Voter turnout among 18-24 year-olds was around 45% in 1990, Rock the Vote’s first year in business, but by 2000, this age group was voting in the range of 38%. There were about 27 million young people aged 18-24 in 1990 and around 29 million in 2000. That means around 11 million young people voted in 2000, and 12.1 million young people voted in 1990, for a net loss of one million young voters. “Rock the Vote” claims that in 1992 it registered 350,000 young people and help lead over two million new young voters to the polls and that these young people reversed a 20-year cycle of declining participation with a 20 percent increase in youth turnout compared to the previous Presidential election. Statistics show that Rock the Vote likely rode a statistical blip, as overall turnout was higher among all age groups that year. In 1996, “Rock the Vote” claimed to register 500,000 new voters, still short of what it was losing over time. Conservatives watch television and are generally more inclined to be (so called) culturally hip then the cultural elite. The media often doesn’t realize what kind of jaded sarcastic people might actually watch a broadcast. It doesn’t seem Obama and Obama girl learned any lessons here. Cooler then thou tactics might work a little in a primary to shock people into knowing your name, but the end result in a general election will be disgust.

rockthevote.com

Against Conspiracy Theory

I only wish things were that organized. things aren’t. hatred only back stabs and betrays… it fizzles out and can’t hold any order together for a very long time in a large geographic order. According to mathematical stats cooperation is the smart and selfish wise strategy… it is hard to imagine a malevolent entity holding cohesion for a long period of time, or at least as long as what is narrated in “Revelations”. Even on the poetic metaphoric level of the four horsemen… it doesn’t hold water. Chaos more times then not has no cohesion. One of the reasons that Jews are hated so much is we provide a cohesion in a community for people to fix they’re hatred on… these hatreds always fall apart because the projectile hatred eventually surfaces as being a mirage and what you end up with are malicious people finding themselves unable to be allies once they have satiated they’re projectile hates. projection on the other and focusing on hate works on the uneducated masses… as we saw in Europe for the last 2000 years or in the Middle East now, but for the powerful it is unlikely to last for a long period. Hatred in the upper class lasts only long enough for it to be convenient. Look at Hilary and Suha Arafat… it became inconvenient for her to have those opinions. She was way to pragmatic… A long term alliance would never develop. Stalin and Hitler’s agreements? I wouldn’t put it past these folk to do ill… but organizing on the level of a religion… (well for example how long did Communism last in the leadership classes? not long. for the most part communism is a diversion from the inner sins of the wealthy on the poor… on a structural level a solution can be resolved through government power is obscene… but the ruling classes weren’t fooled for long… and no one thinks the elite are altruistic… it just shows you the likelihood of a powerful order is unlikely… this is the exact reason that communism is so dangerous… it leaves us with a tyrannical structure… and the rulers of the structure become in flux… hence the structure crumbles and the civilization decays.
As for the Hollywood conspiracy. There is a strong interest in knowledge in the Jewish community… this brings them to social networks and Hollywood in general as writers, actors and artists… the money in Hollywood is proportional to who is working in Hollywood. as far as cold stats of money are concerned the media is not as profitable as some conspiracy theorists might like 2 think. as someone who has worked in advertising… I can tell you the guy who collects advertising money is more times then not begging an industry to advertise. that isn’t to say that sometimes advertising works… that is just to say that a business model has to exist before an organization can expand it’s market share… thus said even if Jews are powerful in the media it is a small proportion to profit from multitudes of potential industries.