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Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

Culture clash... looking at the sites screenshot here: http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official-vb-... (NSFW) I can see how under strict Islamic law that pic would be construed as "obscene, offensive and illegal".

I have... minimal sympathy with these people - a lot of the fault lies with themselves for not understanding the rules, morals and society of the country they were buying from.

I don't think that this generally makes .ly domains any more "unsafe".

(on the other hand; if this is an example of Libya deliberately creating rules to seize domains that is another matter, but at least in this case the complaint seems "legitimate" so we may have to wait and see)

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Excellent point. It shouldn't be news to anyone that Libya isn't a free western democracy.

I had thought about registering a .ly domain for a webapp, and the thing that stopped me was do I really want to have a domain associated with Libya? And that was before I asked myself how bad the dispute resolution process would be.

agreed on the culture clash, however, there is something that is a little odd about this story in general. vb.ly launched in aug 2009 with the very overt subtag: "The Internet’s First & Only Sex-Positive URL Shortener"

Why did it take 13 months for libya to care enough to take it down?

Here is the post on it's launch (possibly nsfw in libya?): http://laughingsquid.com/vb-ly-the-internets-first-only-sex-... (NSFW??)

Indeed. On the other hand why would they spot it?

Non-alarmist explanation; they could have received a complaint (which, lets face it, is how such things usually works in the US too)

It does make it a little more interesting though, certainly :)

That link is NSFW.

Ouch! Sorry, I hadn't properly scrolled down. Note added (thanks!).

Just to add some more amusement: Why the hell would that be not safe for work?

It's hard to state my question without ending up being dismissed as a troll, but I'm deeply amused by different viewpoints related to sex between western cultures. If I take a karma hit for that, so be it.

Anecdote: During the football (yeah, or soccer..) worldcup in Germany images were all over the internet that showed a brochure, which was rumored to be issued by the USA's department of foreign affairs for tourists joining the event. One interesting "fact" about the german culture mentioned in there was ,that violence (on tv, online, etc) might be far less accepted over here and might be felt offensive, while nudity/references to sex might offend the traveller.

I never found out if these things were real, but comments like these remind me of some interesting differences in cultures between states that otherwise often end up being regarded similar in morale and grouped as "western countries".

It's not safe for work because plenty of people reading HN do so from their work during breaks and if they happened to be showing a page which has full-frontal nudity on it, even by accident during work hours they could get fired for that.

Your - or mine - morals don't enter in to it, it's just a fact of life. So it's common courtesy to label links that are not safe for work as such.

It's no trouble at all and if it helps keep the Hacker News crowd employed then I think that's a good thing to strive for.

Oh well - sure. I didn't want to criticize (sp?) the habit at all. Nor did I want to mock anyone's morale or ask for the removal of NSFW tags.

What you just described is just - in my little world - a tiny, little version of the original problem discussed in the thread.

For a part of the world the service vb.ly was not safe for X (work, family, whatever).

For a part of the world (as explained by you) the blog entry and its sexual references/ads/etc are not safe for work.

I wanted to point out the parallels, which seem (mildly) funny to me.

I visited the link at work and I'm sure nobody would ever complain, let alone _think_ about bad consequences for me. Not that I imply that it should be that way or that this is in any way superior to different positions or morale standpoints. It is just - different.

NSFW is in that regard a kind of a lowest common denominator (sp?), tagged on links with good intentions for sure. But using the lowest common point means also that we put a label on something that might be excessive/overly protective to others. I guess I cannot explain my feeling about these similarities in judgement, inparticular around sex/nudity/pornography, any better, sorry.

Short version: I don't question the "NSFW". I want to remind the readers that the reasons why this is necessary in the first place are an interesting thought in light of this discussion.

In this particular case the NSFW status is not even remotely up for discussion.

There is, I think, an important distinction, now that you have raised the point.

In that the application of Sharia law makes a moral judgement on the content - censoring it for the promotion of, in their eyes, illegal content.

In a work environment many things are not appropriate; even in the most liberal of societies pornography is much more of a private thing, enjoyed by smaller groups of people rather than being shared with the world at large. There are also other issues; like, for example, that pornography is connected with sexual excitement and sexual acts - all of which are also socially inappropriate in most workplaces (and public). So rather than a moral judgement it is a practical limitation designed to avoid awkwardness, or offence or distraction.

That link, in particular, is a marginal case, where the pornography is incidental to the reason for being on the page. But within a corporate structure that doesn't matter.

For what it's worth, no one will blink an eyelid where I work either.

The American attitudes about what's safe for work are mostly shaped by sexual harassment law. It's not that our employers believe Porn Is Evil; it's that they fear being sued. It's not even that the courts believe Porn Is Evil; it's that showing an employee porn is one of the tactics of managers who want to have sex with their employees. Since forcing your employee to have sex with you is definitely slimy, we all go along with the NSFW stuff as a necessary cost of reducing slime in the workplace.

But it does mean that we can wind up with a case where nobody in a group would object to a picture personally, but nobody in that group can be allowed to show it to anyone else in the group.

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