Ireland censoring .ie domains

national | rights, freedoms and repression | other press

Wednesday October 25, 2006 19:07

by Hotdog

An Irish business man who tried to register porn.ie has had his application turned down because the word porn is "offensive and immoral". Murder.ie is fine, so is cyber squatting (irishindependent.ie.)

The webmasters comments: http://www.sex.ie/2006/10/13/backwards-ireland-ie-domai...ames/

The Sunday Times article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2416442_1....html

This is censorship of LEGAL material in Ireland. It's a disgrace and an embarrassment.

From the webmaster -

If you want to register a .ie domain name in Ireland, you do so via an organisation called the IE Domain Registry. The IE Domain Registry sometimes require you have a registered business name for the domain you want. This means if you want to register mycompany.ie you need to register the business name “mycompany”. You apply for registered business names through an organisation called the Companies Registration Office.

For quite a while now, I’ve been trying to register the domain “Porn.ie”. I’ve been rejected each time because - according to the IE Domain Registry - the word “porn” is offensive and immoral. To get around this I tried to register “porn” as a business name, but alas, the Companies Registration Office think “porn” is an offensive word.

Just so we’re clear here, they aren’t saying the act of porn is offensive or immoral, they’re saying the word is.

This baffles me for a number of reasons. How is a word immoral? The act of rape is immoral, but the word “rape” isn’t. The act of murder is immoral, but the word “murder” isn’t. Why doesn’t this logic apply to porn, whether or not they think porn is immoral?

What about offensive words? Cunt, nigger, fuck - we all agree these are offensive. Porn is short for Pornography, which is a noun used to describe sexual images and movies. It’s not an offensive word. At worst, it’s slang.

And who are the IE Domain Registry and the Companies Registration Office to decide what’s moral, immoral, offensive, and inoffensive? Do they carry out surveys once a year, asking people which words are offensive and immoral?

No one is going to go to porn.ie thinking it’s a children’s bookshop. Everyone knows what to expect. But even then, it’s not guaranteed porn.ie will contain pornography. The issue here is not about content.

The funny thing is, porn is legal in Ireland. Murder isn’t, advertising prostitution isn’t, but you can still register murder.ie and escorts.ie.

But nooo, no porn websites please. We don’t want any of that dirty stuff in Ireland.

Ugh.