.ly is the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

country code top-level domain A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all tw ...

(ccTLD) for

Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...

Registration

A .ly registration is the process of registering a user

domain name In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services, and more. ...

within the ccTLD for Libya. The .ly domain, introduced in 1997,Libyan Spider Announcements, 29 July 2004.
is administered by the registry LYNIC on behalf of the Libyan Post Telecommunications & Information Technology Company (formerly the General Post and Telecommunication Company). This domain is mainly for the use of the general public of Libya. LYNIC appoints recognized registrars to offer .ly domain names, and these registrars perform all the domain registration tasks on behalf of LYNIC.

Libya Telecom & Technology Libya Telecom & Technology (LTT; ) is a Libyan government-owned company established in 1997 and based in Tripoli, Libya. As the country's most used service provider, LTT accounts for much of Libya's internet penetration, largely thanks to its ...

(ltt.ly) is one of those that offer .ly domains to companies and organizations. Sub-domains are also provided within the .ly domain, at the second and third levels beneath various second levels. According to the registration site, registered .ly domain names must not be "obscene, scandalous, indecent, or contrary to Libyan law or Islamic morality". LYNIC registers domain names on a first-come, first-served basis. Applicants may apply for domains with a registration fee of $75 for each domain. Before registration, the domain name, company name, trademark registration, and other legal documents must be provided. In addition, the .ly domain names being registered should not violate any rules set forth by the registrar. Domain names may be registered for a minimum of one year. Applicants may register domains online or through official registrars list. After completing the registration process, an

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

is sent to the applicant's billing contact address. The .ly domain name becomes active within a few minutes of that email notification.

Second-level domains

The second-level domains which are open to third-level registrations are: * .com.ly — commercial services * .net.ly — Internet-related services * .gov.ly — government and ministries * .plc.ly — state-owned companies * .edu.ly — educational and training institutions * .sch.ly — schools * .med.ly — health-related services * .org.ly — non-profit organizations * .id.ly — individuals. Strings shorter than four symbols long are to be registered only through Libya Telecom and Technology to guarantee that registrants have local presence.

History

IANA delegated registration authority for .ly to Khalil Elwiheishi at the Alshaeen for Information Technology in April 1997. During the weekend of 20 August 2011 at the start of the Battle of Tripoli, the main nic.ly registration site appeared to have been defaced by hackers on the side of the National Liberation Army, though other sites such as bit.ly remained unaffected.

Domain hacks

Many

n domains were reserved for

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

words that end with the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

"-ly", such as name.ly,

musical.ly Musical.ly (pronounced "Musically", styled as musical.ly) was a social media service headquartered in Shanghai with an American office in Santa Monica, California, on which platform users created and shared short lip-sync videos. The first prot ...

(now

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

) and sincere.ly, so-called

domain hack A domain hack is a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name when concatenating two or more adjacent levels of that domain. For example, and , using the domains ''.bot'' and ''.le'', suggest the words ''robot'' and ''example'' respective ...

s. As the annual fee for .ly domains remains high ($75 a year), many domain names remain available on the domain prime market, and some popular ones can be bought on the domain secondary market, the result of the

domain name speculation Domain name speculation, popular as domain investing, domain flipping or domaining in professional jargon, is the practice of identifying and registering or acquiring generic Internet domain names as an investment with the intent of selling them ...

. Many popular

URL shortening URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) may be made substantially shorter and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using a redirect which links to the web page that has a ...

services are registered in the .ly domain, such as

bit.ly Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for use in social networking, SMS, a ...

(formerly default for use on

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

). In October 2010, the domain of " sex-positive" URL shortening service vb.ly, which had been registered in 2009 by American journalist

Violet Blue Violet Blue is an American journalist, author, editor, advisor, and educator. Blue wrote a weekly sex column for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' until 2010. In her podcast, Open Source Sex, she reads erotica and discusses topics such as fe ...

and Ben Metcalfe, was seized by the Libyan web authorities for not being compliant with the

law of Libya Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the art ...

. A Libya Telecom spokesman stated to Blue: "Pornography and adult material aren't allowed under Libyan Law ... Therefore, we removed the domain." According to one blogger, as of 2014 this was the only known domain seized by nic.ly, and it was seized only after several failed attempts to contact the registrant.

References

External links

IANA .ly whois information

NicLy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ly Country code top-level domains Communications in Libya Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries members sv:Toppdomän#L