oh great! i switched domains again! i know what you’re gonna say, but i think i have i justified reason. and while i do have a new domain, at least i’ve kept the website name this time! so why change again? well, first of all, leashme.today is too long... it sounds like an actual sentence, which was good, but is quite a bit to type. plus .my sounds like domain extension, .today doesn’t really. i think ambiguity is fun, but NOT when one can’t be sure if something is, or isn’t a domain name lol.
my second reason is much greater... i do not want to be controlled by american draconian laws. i just want to yap about random bullshit on my website. and this is where .today becomes a problem.
as .today is operated by Binky Moon, LLC, with Identity Digital as the sponsoring organization/registry operator, and the relevant registry infrastructure is tied to a US entity in washington. and this is where the entire problem begins. earlier this year, a texas district court ordered verisign, the company operating the .com registry, to put a registry lock on a foreign porn site after its operator ignored a court order requiring age verification under texas law. the website that i won’t mention. because maybe that one deserved to be shut down, as it allegedly had a ton of non-consensual materials. but actual content is not my point! instead, its how far they can stretch it in the future? it’s the matter of principle, because where do they actually draw the line? what if my profanity-ridden blog suddenly becomes a thorn in the eye of some US senator? had i stayed under a .today extension, which is controlled by an US company, a US law or court order could theoretically end up affecting my domain through a US-based registry operator, even though im just some person running a blog. i do not want to have to potentially deal with that, even if chances of it happening are minimal. because its better safe than sorry.
third, for about two years i used to use riri.my. as my name is rina, and nickname is riri. i am well aware of .my’s limitations, but the trade up is much lower, when compared to anything US-based, for my specific type of content.
while malaysia does have pretty strict laws around pornography and online speech, my website isn’t pornographic. profanity is basically the most adult my content gets, and i’m not planning to post anything actually sexual. which is as adult as my website gets. ‘leash.my’, and ‘leashbound’ is only of sexual nature, if you read it that way. this shouldn’t be the primary reading. i named the website ‘leashbound’ simply because its weird and makes people think. but the final reading is up to you. it having multiple meanings is on purpose. like i said, ambiguity is fun. also, malaysia does have a constitutional right to freedom of speech, but it comes with a bunch of statutory restrictions, but i’m not planning to write political or religiously inflammatory stuff anyway.
as ironic as it sounds, where we’re heading, its more likely america wont like my content, than malaysia, even if you’d expect the opposite. europe has also pushed for age verification, but it only applies for very large online platforms. some US laws are broad enough that i can at least imagine a future version of this kind of regulation reaching smaller websites too, even if the laws i’m actually talking about today are much narrower. because from what i’ve seen, some US online-safety laws aren’t limited to the old-school idea of ‘porn website = bad’. different laws target different kinds of content and services, and i’m mostly worried about where that regulatory trend goes rather than claiming that today’s laws literally ban swearing on blogs.. which lets be real, i shouldn’t have to worry if ‘little timmy’ is offended. my website was never meant for children. and you cant and shouldn’t expect me to ask people to give me their IDs to allow them to read or comment on my shitposts. this is very unreasonable.
and yeah, malaysia has online-safety rules too, but the particular licensing framework i’m thinking of is aimed at large social-media and messaging services, not some random personal blog. from my non-lawyer understanding, the US drafts are vague and broad enough that my site could be in scope, theoretically. im aware that they do have much bigger fish to fry, but, again, i overthink a lot. and i dont want even 1% chance of my domain being taken down. and thus i would rather use a domain whose registry is malaysian rather than one whose registry is operated through a US-based entity. one is much less likely to ever reach then the other. i’m also working towards moving my entire website from oracle cloud to an european-based hosting. CLOUD ACT is such a bullshit too. unfortunately for the foreseeable future i will have to keep it on oracle but i will get moving as soon as possible.