PHYSICAL investment in Libya would merit much due diligence. On the internet, this is not yet standard. The woes of vb.ly, a website that used Libya’s .ly domain name, highlight a neglected problem for web businesses and users.

Web page addresses have to be both lengthy (key words help search-engine rankings) and terse (to be snappy and memorable, and to fit on Twitter). That has created a business: services that shorten long links. Most such firms shun the well-used “.com” and “.net” suffixes, and seek catchy domains instead (see table). Libya’s suffix allows such catchy names as “unlike.ly”. The most successful domain-shortening service, bit.ly, got 1.5 billion clicks last week. It makes money from customised link-shortening services for other firms and from mining the data about links that users create.

Shortening has its critics. It can slow down the web. Spammers use shortened addresses to dupe internet users into clicking on infected or bogus sites. And then there are issues with regulators.

In early October, just as bit.ly raised $9m in new capital, Libya’s regulator for internet addresses blocked another site, vb.ly. This is named after one of its founders, a writer on sexual matters called Violet Blue. Its main feature is that it does not filter out, or post warnings to, links with adult content. After tolerating the service for 13 months the Libyan regulator, nic.ly, now argues that vb.ly violates a local prohibition on pornography. The regulator says this exceptional step was taken only when vb.ly did not respond to inquiries (vb.ly denies this). It has also jinxed other businesses by reserving all domains of four letters or fewer for locals.

Libya’s move is not just bad news for those who have used vb.ly for their online porn collections. It raises bigger issues about protection from local regulators in ill-run and distant countries. Bit.ly also offers users an alternative called j.mp, the domain of the Northern Mariana Islands, which come under American law. Shortened links may be important bits of intellectual property. As well as random mixes of letters and numbers, they can also have useful titles such as this one: econ.st/vblywoes.