URL Shorteners

The growth of Twitter is imposing a strain on that danged old Internet. I suppose even terrorists can gain world-wide swagger if they operate a suitably-short Internet domain. I wonder who runs the .aq domain?:

After the Libyan government shut down a "sex-positive" .ly site, probable presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) says he is switching his PAC web site to more friendly domains.

"We're learning about this for the first time and taking steps to change the domain for our site," a spokesman told Politico's Ben Smith.

The spokesman said Mitt.ly, a personalized URL shortener which links to Romney's Free & Strong America PAC, will likely be replaced with Mitt.tt.

The .tt domain is based in Trinidad and Tobago, a Caribbean archipelago.

The .ly extension, popular with URL shorteners like bit.ly, is hosted by Libya. Earlier today, two bloggers announced their "sex-positive" shortening service, vb.ly, was shut down. The bloggers had created the service in order to allow sexual, adult and NSFW links to be shortened -- something the bigger services, like bit.ly, prohibit.

The Libyan government also prohibits adult content, and shut down the site, saying it violated "Islamic morality."