Period.
But there are so many assholes around that the service had to be killed.
Sad. I was one of the legitimate users, indeed.
The service has been discontinued
We regret that we have had to discontinue the u.nu URL shortening service.
Since the beginning, it has been plagued with abuse from spammers and other no-goodniks. Despite considerable efforts to stay ahead of the game, the abuse has been relentless. By the end, hundreds of thousands of URLs in violation of the terms of service were being blocked daily, but many were still sneaking through. The amount of manual policing required was massive, especially considering the total lack of reward - the site earns virtually no money (total cumulative earnings from ads were under US$10) and in fact costs quite a bit to run.
The last straw came on September 3, 2010, when the server was disconnected without notice by our hosting provider in response to reports of a number of links to child pornography sites.
The disconnection of the server caused us serious problems, and to be honest, the level and nature of the abuse has become quite demoralizing. Given the choice between spending time and money to find a different home, or just giving up, the latter won out.
Our apologies to the legitimate users of the service. Hopefully you will find another URL shortener that meets your needs.
They now provide other clever and nice tools: a World time zone converter and a funny website telling you about Free things to see and do on vacation…