NIC.ly, the domain registry for the .ly domain, have made a statement regarding their deletion of our domain vb.ly (prior coverage here, here, here (slightly NSFW), and across the internet)
Contrary to their assertion in their statement, we did NOT receive any communication from NIC.ly before they pulled the vb.ly domain.
We had received other emails from them previously including our domain renewal notice just a month and a half before so I know they had a working email address for us and that we were receiving their correspondence.
They’ve made out in their statement that we ignored their email – given how upset myself and Violet Blue have been over this I would urge people to consider whether these are the actions of two people who would intentionally ignore such a significant warning. Why would we do that?
It is disappointing that NIC.ly didn’t use the opportunity of their statement to discuss the issue of a domain registry regulating, and essentially censoring, the content of a website. They attempted to redirect the conversation by over-embellishing the nature of the site to suit their argument rather than dealing with the wider issue for everyone which is why is a domain registry proscribing editorially what is and isn’t allowed content-wise on a website that use its domains. I would urge the wider Internet public to consider the incredibly serious issues that raises.
I am also disappointed that NIC.ly didn’t respond to our concerns about how this essentially makes the use of .ly domains for user-generated content untenable.
I do, however, feel relieved that they will not be letting anyone else register the domain – we were concerned from a security perspective of someone else registering the domain and re-routing existing vb.ly links out there to insecure or spoofed websites. We hadn’t highlighted this concern previously because we didn’t want to give away such a vector for abuse but now they have said the domain is ‘locked’ I’m happy to mention it.
UPDATE: Post publication, I have a further thought with regards to NIC.ly’s statement on their recent change to their policy on short domain registrations. From their statement:
NIC.ly’s concern that the rise in popularity of URL shorteners from abroad taking up all these names has deprived locals of their right to register the important 3 letter abbreviations of their various businesses and interests. We as a Registry would prefer seeing art.ly used for a website about Libyan art for instance
I wonder what the current owners of the domain art.ly think about this statement? I find it shocking that having been happy to have previously sold art.ly the current owners, the domain registry is now saying that they don’t really want them to own it and would rather they had it back and could sell it to a local company.
I had previously questioned whether NIC.ly’s was under pressure to recover ‘valuable’ domains that have already been registered to foreign owners. This would appear to confirm I was correct. I therefore feel this further puts into question the commercial viability for anyone using a .ly domain that could be considered ‘premium’ as there is now an additional concern of NIC.ly aspiring to have the domain back.