Is BL hosted in Russia for a reason?

[Engage]

Self explanatory.

 

[tambourine-man]

The low ambient temperature keeps the server cool.

 

[One Thousand Words]

Cheap supply of fuel grade plutonium to maintain the servers.









We might need to upgrade to weapons grade soon.

 

[alasdairm]

bl is not hosted in russia. the domain is registered in russia.

alasdair

 

[RedLeader]

The domain is Russian, server is (still?) in continental Europe.

The idea is that Russia is very open in terms of allowed content. And perhaps cheaper too.

Edit: Ali best me to it.

 

[Foreigner]

^ Russia recently censored Erowid domestically. I wouldn't call them open. But compared to the United States of arrogance they are.

 

[RedLeader]

Interesting. Russia does seem to disapprove of harm-reduction. I wrote that more in reference to why the site was moved there a decade or so ago when things were different. The site my have to migrate if Russia cracks down too hard.

 

[RobotRipping]

to avoid oppressive government censorship against harm reduction information.

 

[tambourine-man]

Russia passed some fruity law concerning Internet content which, theoretically, could allow them to impose restrictions on the use of their domain registries.

We're aware of it... but it's only a name.

 

[cj]

I doubt russia cares about bluelight since we are aimed at a western audience. They seem to worry more about domestic censorship

 

[sekio]

to avoid oppressive government censorship against harm reduction information.

the us government/icann doesn't shut down erowid.org.

just because the domain name ends in .ru, doesn't mean the server is hosted there, like others have mentioned.

 

[Reverend Random]

FYI the Russian government is very opposed to Harm Reduction in practice. Not allowing needle exchange, opiate substitution programs et cetera. Russia is a very bad place if you're a substance user and in need of some help. And unfortunately there are many many substance users who are in a bad place. Just thought that needed mentioning.

Isn't the BL's server in the Netherlands or is that classified info?

 

[alasdairm]

from the faq:

Bluelight uses three UNIX servers, hosted in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The forum runs on vBulletin with plugins and custom modifications. Additional features are Blogs and Gallery. Bluelight also generously provides a dedicated server for Pillreports.com.

alasdair

 

[Reverend Random]

Ah, oops. Musta read that somewhere before. Thanks.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

from the faq:alasdair

The Gallery was shut down a while ago, why list it in the FAQ as an additional feature?

 

[tambourine-man]

Cos it's old and busted.

Edited.