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We have not defined in our current policy what words are necessarily offensive and unregisterable but DOMAINZ tends to follow the FCC list of seven words that can not be used on air.

Policy Committee recommends that we should remove the ban for the reasons below

  1. By banning just some words we are seen to give implicit approval to the words we do let through. This contrasts with our general policy of not making judgements as to who may use what name..
  2. The gTLDs like *.com no longer ban any offensive words
  3. People have been able to work around the ban with domain names such as motherf-cker.co.nz which is a legal and registerable name
  4. Because we only control third level names we are unable to anyway stop people registering for example sucker.co.nz and setting up a 4 th level domain such as cock.sucker.co.nz
  5. Why ban certain words just in domain names when they are can be used on the websites themselves.
  6. We have been unable to come up with any definitive list of what words we will ban and hence can be accused of having a very ad hoc policy.
  7. We only ban offensive words in english yet let through potentially offensive words in Maori which is also an official language of NZ.
  8. Having the current policy, without defining what words are not acceptable, stops DOMAINZ from being able to have a fully automated registry where people can register names without human interference in the registry process, thus restricting the registry to normal working hours only.

Therefore for all of the above reasons we recommend to Council that the ban on offensive words be lifted.

Public comment is sought before Council makes a final decision to rescind the current policy banning offensive words.

© 2000 The Internet Society of New Zealand
Last updated 17 April 2000

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Offensive Words Policy