The lesson behind the Libyan domain scandal

Friday, October 8th, 2010

Over the past few days, a storm has been brewing between the Libyan domain name registry and the free love hippies inhabiting the rest of the web.

Here’s the short version: sex columnist Violet Blue started up her own “sex positive” URL shortener,  at vb.ly – it’s similar to bit.ly, but unlike that site, it doesn’t ban porn in its T&Cs.

The .ly domain name is popular because it’s short and cute. However, it also happens to be the country code top-level domain (ccTDL) for Libya, a nation not exactly renowned for its sexual freedoms.

(more…)

www.your-choice.your-choice

Friday, June 27th, 2008

So, the top-level domain registration process has been opened up and you can now grab anything you like – just as long as you can put a decent business case to Icann, that is, and pay the whopping $100,000 registration fee. Oh, and buy and run all the expensive, power-hungry servers and hardware necessary to host it.

It seems unlikely that I will be grabbing www.matthew.sparkes anytime soon; I doubt I could recoup my costs by renting domains out to members of the Sparkes clan.
(more…)