Why has the bluelight URL the ".ru" extension?

xxl

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 30, 2006
Messages
1,419
This may seem a naive question but ".ru" means Russia. Now as I understand BL is hosted in the Netherlands.
 
Quick facts about Bluelight
by Catch-22 and johnboy

Why does Bluelight's address have a "ru" at the end? What does "ru" mean?

Some countries have their own domain suffix (.uk is the UK and .au is Australia). "ru" is for Russia.

i think its because .com or .net or whatever was not suitable at the time and .nu was available (url used to be .nu but changed in 2005)
 
because we're all communists here in europe. %)

seriously, i think the main reason is cos it was cheap, and like Slay mentioned, the more well-known TLDs weren't available.

there was a major security problem in the great crash of 05 when we were on the bluelight.nu domain so they had to change it to a different domain, i.e. bluelight.ru.

no doubt an admin will come in and correct or expand on my recollection there. ;)
 
I think .nu just got weird (too expensive or too insecure or something) but I wasn't here at the time.

Like the others have said, the TLD's are gone or more expensive - e.g. kmart has bluelight.com.
 
I see. But it doesn't mean the servers or the data are kept in Russia. Because I wouldn't trust Russia to be very respectful of privacy.
 
And all this time I thought they did it for the lulz.
 
xxl said:
I see. But it doesn't mean the servers or the data are kept in Russia. Because I wouldn't trust Russia to be very respectful of privacy.
correct, they are in Holland.

perhaps you would trust the US more to keep our privacy? ;)

we weren't based in Niue either when we were on the .nu domain...
 
From wikipedia:

Kmart became known for its "Blue Light Specials." They occurred at surprise moments when a store worker would light up a mobile police light and offer a discount in a specific department of the store. The phrase "attention Kmart shoppers" also entered into the American pop psyche.
 
felix said:
we weren't based in Niue either when we were on the .nu domain...
I'm not very up to date regarding domain attributions. I thought the last extension in a URL always indicated a country of one of the "accepted" domaines like .com and .edu

I would trust Russia marginally more than the US for a drug-related site but I wouldn't rate it as best choice either.
 
^ .ru is the top level domain indicating the russian federation. this simply indicates that the bluelight site is registered there. the servers are physically elsewhere.

alasdair
 
Infinite Jest said:
I think .nu just got weird (too expensive or too insecure or something) but I wasn't here at the time.

That's funny, because in the late 90s I came to associate .nu with warez and porn sites primarily. I saw it used for a lot of sites where it might be in the administrators' best interest to make their geographical location ambiguous.

So when did the mighty nation of Niue start feeling its oats?

I'd host an English language drug forum in Russia any day before the US. The language barrier would provide a bit more radar to fly under, and it would be a lot easier to get away with hiring a bunch of thugs to protect your physical location and its workers.
 
I think .nu just got weird (too expensive or too insecure or something) but I wasn't here at the time.

i heard c-22 left and the next day BL got hacked and that's why we all had to change our passwords, and that's how some people lost their accounts.

heard about some other strange happenings in relation to those two events, but then again, this site seems to generate some sort of iFolk-lore or something so who knows what's true.
 
iirc it had something to do with .nu domains not being transferrable while .ru domains were.
 
i heard c-22 left and the next day BL got hacked and that's why we all had to change our passwords, and that's how some people lost their accounts.

heard about some other strange happenings in relation to those two events, but then again, this site seems to generate some sort of iFolk-lore or something so who knows what's true.

having been staff when c-22 started to lose his mind, i believe that.
 
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