The Rise and Fall of .Ly

In 2012, the US imposed sanctions on Syria, for, among other things, their occupation of Lebanon.
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Artsy -- a social platform for sharing and purchasing art -- occupied the domain Art.sy. The “.sy” in the URL is the country code for Syria. .Sy domains are ultimately registered with and purchased from a Syrian Internet authority. Although Artsy had registered Art.sy in 2011, before sanctions were imposed, Artsy’s annual payments to maintain the domain meant they were breaking sanctions.
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Art.sy changed its url to Artsy.net (a change that cost them “under $50,000.”)
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.ly -- the TLD for the North African nation of Libya. As the suffix for most English-language adverbs, it’s quite popular. The allure of a punchy domain, in an age when most reasonable .coms were already taken, even inspired a trend of adverbial startup names: Embed.ly, Crowd.ly, Ow.ly, Bit.ly. 
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