Apr 08
Bit.ly’s Libya Connection
Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili
You’ve read all of the books and watched all of the movies about the origins of what you eat, but do you ever really think about where your domains come from? A good number of the top-level domain codes you see belong to different countries. ICANN, the organization in charge of doling out top-level domains, is notoriously stingy when it comes to introducing new names (though it has loosened up a bit, in recent years).
One of the more popular Web suffixes, .ly is coming under a bit of scrutiny for its country of origin, as of late. The code, used for popular URL shorteners like bit.ly and ow.ly, comes from Libya. In fact, the the chairman of the General Post and Telecommunications Co., the company in charge of the code, is Mohammed el-Gadhafi, the oldest son of embattled dictator, Moammar Gadhafi.
The question is how connected these services really are to the country they bought their domain from. For some, any association at all is too much. The Wall Street Journal contacted Nancy Pelosi. The congresswoman’s assistant told the paper that it wasn’t aware of the Libya connection, but “given this new information, we will no longer be using this free service.”
Bit.ly issued the following statement on the issue,
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.
The best quote, however, comes from Ryan, the head of HootSuite (the company behind ow.ly): “But at the end of the day, buying oil helps Gadhafi more.”
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