does anyone know if they've made a public statement about how they'll deal with the whole .ly domain risk that people have been buzzing about lately?
Given he was having his investors sign contracts on a $10m Series B investment the same day, I'm not surprised John Borthwick said 'it was just noise' -- I'd have done the exact thing myself. It's what you do as an entrepreneur to get shit done.
Doesn't mean it is just noise for them.
The peanut gallery have gone to great lengths to tell us Libya is in its right to set whatever rules it likes about domains (and even content of sites), that it is reasonable for Libya to change those rules at any time and that it is even ok for Libya to interpret those laws differently on a case-by-case basis. (wow).
So with that in mind, I'd be fairly concerned.
Given the way things seem to be going over at NIC.ly I'd be interested to see what kind of arrangement NIC.ly propositions to Bit.ly if/when they decide they no longer like bit.ly linking to depictions of the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) or hardcore pornography. I'm sure they won't simply can the domain but come to some other arrangement (ie financial) to resolve this.
And if I was bit.ly, with everything I have in play now, I'd accept rather than have my domain taken away from me and a significant part of my business shut down. It's just business (Internet = Serious Business)
This use/misuse of ccTLDs for commercial purposes (e.g. .tv, .ly, .it, .co, .to, etc.) is a relatively recent practice, there hasn't been enough time to decide if it's a safe practice or not. It'll likely take only one "disaster" to wake people up to the idea that there is indeed risk to basing your business on the cooperation of a country chosen solely because it has a catchy TLD abbreviation.