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Adult .IE Domain Names Banned As Immoral
An anonymous reader writes, "The Irish domain prefix, .ie, is controlled by an organization called the IE Domain Registry. In their terms and conditions they state, 'The proposed domain name must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality.' But this policy is only applied to sex words as this adult webmaster has discovered. Murder.ie is acceptable, Porn.ie is not. Can a word be immoral? And in this day and age, should a government-chosen domain registry be allowed to enforce their own moral code on the public?"
From TFS:
porn.ie is a poor example, since pornography has been a strict superset of free speech since the 1960's; how about: juden-raus.ie?juden-raus.ie, I suspect, would convert many here into willing censors.
Isn't this standard procedure for most country TLDs? I just checked for my country:
From their webpage:
Translation: The proposed domain name must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality
Thus, identical to the Ireland registry provisions. The real question here is, why someone would consider "murder" falling into that provision? I clearly don't. You see, this could be a website about prevening murder, or a forum for people seeking help that had a relative murdered. I don't know.
Also keep in mind that pretty much all "normal" sex-related words should be registrable just because of *that* reason. tits.com used to be about birds (the real, flying kind). Now, I do not know what the porn guy exactly tried to register (just checked the article: it was porn.ie). It would be hard to defend "bondagegirls.ie", but a case for "sex.ie" might be acceptable, if the content clearly is non-sexual. (Well, the applicant was a p0rn peddler, so good luck to that)
Oh, and I see he owns sex.ie... Now really, it's not as if sex.ie is registrable, so should be murder.ie.... He is complaining about nothing *at all*.
What I think that happens: the registration process is completely automated and the words just pass through an automated filter which, incidentially, just contains sex-related words. He should try "t1ts.ie" ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
As much as I love the country, remember that you're talking about a nation that banned the sale of condoms to minors for a long time. They're simply more conservative over there; I don't believe that makes them wrong (or right, for that matter).
That is disgusting. If true, I feel that IE Domain Registry is revealing their own sickness by enforcing such as bizarre standard.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
You're still implying there's something wrong with pornographic actions, and that it's the role of the government to regulate them.
I'd suggest that whatever sexual activity takes place between consenting adults (or solo, given that this is Slashdot) is their own business.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
We are talking about the country where reading Playboy was illegal only a few years ago, check out the wikipedia page for the whole censoring frenzy.
(or solo, given that this is Slashdot)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
That country would have been the United Kingdom (specifically, Northern Ireland), not the Republic of Ireland. And even there, they stopped a while ago. You're wrong in both time and space.
Slavery, apartheid, imprisoning and executing unwanted people. These have all been public policy at one time or another. If we base our decisions on "public policy" instead of freedom of expression and liberty we are on the way to totalitarianism.
Nice domain, would've been really cool during the browser wars.
The fact of the matter is that you are purchasing a service, and as the providers of the service they are allowed to set the rules. If they wanted to set the rules such that every domain must start with the letters "ie" they could, and I don't see any reason they shouldn't. It is their service, and they should be allowed to set the terms. Period.
The truth of the matter is that if enough people didn't like it, they wouldn't sell enough domains to stay profitable, and they would be forced to change.
I'm sure this concept will be completely foreign to the socialist minions here on Slashdot, but that's how capitalism works. Your business, your terms. Government run or not, that's the way it is. If you don't like it, go buy a domain name somewhere else, and stop whining. Nobody is trying to oppress you, they just don't want their registry polluted with filth.
Did you think countries of religious fundamentalism were restricted to poor 3rd world countries?
No, we just thought they were restricted to America.
Boom-cha! Thank-you, I'll be here all night.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
.US bans various domains too for similar reasons, such as FuckCensorship.US
r ship.us&TYPE=DOMAIN
For the timebeing, along with others, it's in perpetual limbo:
http://www.whois.us/whois.cgi?TLD=us&dn=fuckcenso
Ron
Posting sexual pictures of yourself on a site called www.porn.ie, for example, is making a decision to participate in a sexual activity (exhibitionism).
Going to a site called www.porn.ie is a decision to participate in a sexual activity (voyeurism).
If people choose to do either, they are consenting to make the sexual activity their own business.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
"should a government-chosen domain registry be allowed to enforce their own moral code on the public?"
yes.
your right to free speech does not:
1. extend to other countries
2. usually does not extend to material unsuitable for minors, depending on the situation and audience.
(like creepy domainnames for porn site)
3. does not extend to other things, like slander, libel, false advertising, misrepresentation, etc.
mostly your right to free speech is there to criticize the government(your own government), it's not there so you can download child porn.
If you want to get upset, having a nazi.xx domain is illegal in most European countries. but as far as I know it is legal in the US. WHOIS for: nazi.com, nazi.org
I personally find domains like IHR.ORG and VHO.ORG far more offensive, they belong to Holocaust denial groups. Relastically we should ban those domains before we ban BIGJUICYSLUTS.COM (is that a real domain? I bet it is)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No wonder I've never come across an Irish website! I'll have to use -A flag in the future.
There is nothing wrong with keeping society prim, proper, polite and personable on the surface.
Except for, you know, the idea that we should be free to do whatever the hell we want, so long as we're not harming others. I know freedom (and liberalism) in general is out of favour these days, but still...
don't force those who adminsiter and check these to suffer your personal tastes, and don't cry foul by their decisions. That is what pisses me off.
So we should all suffer YOUR personal tastes? Or should we go with "majority rules" here, and fuck anyone who disagrees with the majority?
Meet Bob, he had the same rights as everyone. One day he fucked a watermelon, and loved it. Now he felt that he didn't have the same rights as everyone else and started a campaign for 'equal rights' and 'tolerance'
And so long as Bob isn't harming a soul while fucking watermelons, what precisely is the problem? If he's prevented by law from doing that, he damned well SHOULD campaign for equal rights and tolerance.
I think your poorly-veiled allusion to gay rights, plus your use of quotation marks around 'equal rights' and 'tolerance' speaks volumes about your position, though. You do realize that without 'equal rights', it's just as easy for someone to find something about you that is slightly different than the majority, and get after you about it?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
And you know what, the majority would agree. You don't like it? Go live in fundamentalist/survivalist camp and then decide who is the kooky one.
Personally, I think that the one who is the kooky one is the one who thinks that disagreeing with censorship is equivalent to being a fundamentalist. That's just my opinion though...
Here's a decent definition of censorship: The practice of suppressing a text or part of a text that is considered objectionable according to certain standards.
This is censorship. They aren't self-governing rules - they are striking specific sites simply because they find the name morally objectionable. This is a government, not a simple administrator. This is governmental censorship. Look at the argument. You can now form your opinion and feel free to disagree or agree, but definitions of words are definitions of words.
While we're getting to the definition of words, I didn't know that the majority would agree. I'm not sure you know either - you should probably write "guess".
Now I'm still not sure what the fuck having sex with a watermelon has to do with this issue...
Censorship isn't censorship when it's "self governing"? What? And how is this self-governing? It's being enforced by a private company, not by the people.
"Of course the rule can't be wrong, simply because it isn't quite as strict as a the rules in an arbitrarily chosen survival camp!" A truly masterful point. Arg, how did you come up with this?
Oh, and there's nothing wrong with keeping society prim, proper, polite and personable. So if you want to drop the "f word" in a post, then feel free, but don't cry foul when I mod you down for it, and don't force those who administer you to suffer your personal tastes.
But I'll still let your mom be on it.
quick.ie
You can onl register a personal domain with your initials and two digits after that eg JohnSMith can get js01.ie and he you have to demonstrate a "Real and Substantive Connection" to Ireland. After that companies with Irish links, state agencies, schools and politicians (and a few more categories) can register a domain. So this ban will only affect those who managed to register a company or trademark with an "offensive" name or try to make use of the "Discretionary Name" category. Look here for more details: http://www.domainregistry.ie/RegistrationPolicy.ph p
This has very little to do with freedom to be honest. It's their tld, they've setup the rules. Don't agree with them, buy a .com name.
No, you should suffer the Terms Of Service of the registrar, like the ones many tld's enforce. Don't like it? Write to the registrar, then write to the government, after failing to yield results just buy the damned .com .
No problem for me. Hell, if Bob wants to enjoy his watermelons that way, or if he is gay, as long as he's not bothering me, have fun and safe sex (or not). But if the Irish tld organization doesn't want to sell him a domainname, it's their right. It's their service, and they have a TOS up that warns you about this.
Equal rights and tolerance are just arguments you'd use when you're disciminating against specific groups of people (homosexuals, race, ethnic groups, etc), in this case no pornography is allowed at all. Not heterosexual, not homosexual, not interracial, not interspecies, just plain old NOTHING. While I don't agree with the fact that you can't open a porn site under .ie (after all, what the world really needs is more porn on the internet), it's their tld. Buy a .com name if you don't agree.
No, we just thought they were restricted to America.
.IE decision cropping up from time to time. Give it another thirty years and you won't be able to tell an urbanite from Dublin or Galway from someone from New York or London, apart from the accents. Not saying its a good thing or a bad thing, but its how I see it going.
Actually even in Ireland, the situation is changing extremely rapidly. What the GP was referring to was the "troubles" in the north, which had almost nothing to do with religion - Catholic / Protestant was just a convenient title for the opposing camps. Republican / unionist would be better. All that is besides the point, however.
The gap between younger and older generations in Ireland is staggering. We basically went from ultra conservative, churchgoing folks to hedonisitic, hip, and tech-savvy in about thirty years. The older generation is still in political power however, which is why you see things like this
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Let me tell you a little something about Ireland.
.ie registry. In fact it's almost certain as they tend to be incompetant misers and .ie domain names are about $90 a year. So on behalf of the country, I formally apologise for this disgrace. We'd get rid of them, but ironically, the smaller the country, the harder it is to dislodge the dead wood from office.
Yeah it's all true. Playboy was Illegal, along with condoms and being homosexual until 1993. Yes 1993. Prior to thise, people were still selling playboys, condonms and being homosexual, but it was in fact illegal. We don't actually have an explicit right to freedom of speech in this country. In the Irish constitution, most if not all personal rights are, to use the exact phrase, "subject to public order and morality". Oy'veh!
Anyway, it's not like that over here anymore. Long story short, people got relatively wealthy and now have the money to be as debauched and decandent as they like, hence the laws got changed. The current Taoiseach of the country, that's the Prime Minister, is divorced and living with his girlfriend. Or he was at any rate, while still Taoiseach. He might have married her. Might. So no we are not currently talking about a conservative catholic theocracy anymore. Because it was a conservative catholic theocracy at one point. I've got witnesses who can testify to that.
However! There's still a lot of old guard catholic dead wood hanging around. The kind who thought that Vatican II was an opening of the floodgates of sin. They're here and there, usually in minor offical positions that they obtained through their connections to government. "Pillars of the Community" had a lot of government connections over here, mostly because everyone else had emigrated.
Anyway, these kind of officals tend not only to be catholics, they are very often members of some subversive catholic organisation like Opus Dei or the Knights of Columbanus. I believe the attoreny general in the infamous X case was a member of the latter. Think Pat Robertson, only without the TV show. Trust me, these guys are the real pros, Robertson's just a wannabe.
Anyway, it's highly likely that someone of that ilk is running the
May the Maths Be with you!
where did you get THAT idea? The only thing a porn site would most likely "incite" is masturbation.
I got permanently modded -1 because I dared to question Israel on
I visited Ireland for the first time about 5 years ago and I was blown away by how modern it is, both in infrastructure and attitude. Really a great country, friendly people, nice climate (it was sunny the entire time), high tech industry. Can't say enough nice stuff about you folks.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Translated:
Yes, according to the DENIC anale-penetration.de is completely valid. However, the registration can be rejected if it would be obviously illegal - which is not the case with porn.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
is still free after all these years. and... gets rejected every week
/.
Like most pula here on
Girls sleep around, and that's really no good for anybody.
I would argue that effective birth control has a lot more to do with this than "television". You're a LOT less likely to "take a chance" with that good looking guy you met if there's a high probability you'll end up with a baby out of a night's passion. Oh and why is it that girls sleeping around is no good, but guys sleeping around doesn't get a mention?
Women were culturally restricted to be a subservient class in a male dominated world. All this has changed, and now women fend for themselves, work for themselves, and educate themselves. Basically the sexual differences between male and female have been blurred now. There's no reason why they shouldn't entertain themselves sexually as well. What's good for the goose is also good for the gander.
While I agree that extremes in any situation including sex may lead to disappointing results, I feel that education, not imposition from the outside with stupid (and unenforceable) laws, is the solution. Outlawing something only makes it illegal. It does NOT stop people from doing it.
Morals are individual things. Respect for your fellow human being means you can't impose your point of view on them.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's pretty much like asking "Is God fair?". I only hope you don't expect an objective answer, because morals are just as subjective as religious beliefs (and please don't hit me back with a Wikipedia link to an article about moral absolutism or moral objectivism).
You just got troll'd!
but horn.ie will do
I disagree. You probably accept that the airwaves "belong to the public", and you probably accept that we need to regulate them technically to keep them usable. So regulation in some form is okay, right? Here's the part where we disagree... if the airwaves belong to the public, then the public should be able to determine their use. While our democratic process might be flawed, it remains our best option for determining how to use public property. In my mind, banning nudity during daytime TV is no better or worse than banning nudity in a public park.
Also, I happen to think that the moral code used by the FCC is stupid. Nudity and sex are better than violence, IMHO, yet violence is not regulated very much while nudity and sex are. I'm apparently not in the majority, however. I also think that cable and satellite should remain out of the reach of the FCC, since they are not "public". Even where the cable is owned by the public, it is usually owned by a locality, and the FCC should have no jurisdiction.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You're right, and that's really the only argument I see as being valid here. I'd say though, virtually every human activity can and will be misused. That's a good reason for effective laws and law enforcement, not a good excuse for censorship and repression.
It's the slavery (both physical and economic) that is the problem and needs to be dealt with, not the expression of sexuality.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Yeah, but I have to go to work, otherwise I starve, too.
If women were told that they couldn't work any job, but porn, then you'd have a better argument.
The next time you see a guy breaking his back working shit labor, ask yourself if he's sure he wants to be there. This is, essentially, the trafficking of human beings.
Watch everything you buy. You don't know where it came from.
We should make buying shoes illegal; I hear that the people who are forced to make them don't have any alternatives. It's essentially slavery.
It would be hard to defend "bondagegirls.ie"
Why?
I mean, it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but clearly some people are turned on by this kind of thing, and so long as it's just a theatre of willing participants what's the problem?
If it isn't just a theatre of willing participants, then there are crimes being commited that need to be addressed by far stronger means than censoring website names, and anyone who is going to suggest that any resources be spent on censoring website names while such crimes are being committed must have a very strange notion of logic and priorities. I mean really, what kind of blithering idiot would say, "People are being tied up against their will! Quick, we must BAN CERTAIN WEBSITE NAMES! That will solve the problem!"
Or, for the homophobes in the audience, what about gayboys.ie? Or gaygirls.ie?
Jews and Muslims may have scriptural grounds for hating gays, but Christians do not, and Ireland is a nominally Catholic country. Jesus never said anything about homosexuality (unlike remarriage after divorce, which he strictly forbade), Paul only referred to it ambiguously, and the Old Testament rules against it have the same force as those against wearing cotton-polyester (Deut 22:11). And nowhere in the Bible is there a single word against lesbians, so we must conclude that God is ok with all that hot girl-on-girl action we see on the web.
What kind of "morality" is opposed to the free expression of sexuality? And why? If the claim is that the free expression of sexuality is "harmful" due to some purported indirect and subtle effect, then why wouldn't such a morality be far, far more opposed to far greater harms, like warfare?
The logic: "We must ban all depictions of sex to prevent some subtle and non-obvious kind of harm" seems far weaker than "We must ban all depictions of violence to help prevent the clear and obvious harm that violence does." I'm not in favour of banning any depictions, because depictions don't do harm.
So why is anyone concerned with banning depictions of sex, while Arnold Schwartznegger gets elected governor of California on the strength of movies that glorify violence?
This is a serious question, and I think it's about time the would-be censors answered it in clear, unambiguous and consistent language.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Cable and satellite are just as "public" as broadcast, and the rationale for regulating them is identical. Both use scarce public resources.
:)
I disagree, friend. Anybody with a receiver in range can pick up broadcasts, but with cable and "most" (not all) satellite services, you have to have a subscription. You're correct that satellite does use spectrum, though. I suppose it's tomato, tomahto.
I look at XM Radio (I have no experience with Sirius) as an example of where I believe the FCC should stay out of it. They have two satellites ("Rock" south of Miami, and "Roll" south of San Diego) which they have launched, and one can only receive the signals by having an XM antenna, an XM receiver, and an XM subscription.
I don't see how the FCC has license to monkey with that system any more than they would closed-circuit TV. When I sign up for their services, I know what they offer. It's like signing up for HBO. When you sign up specifically for it, you know there's the chance that there'll be boobies appearing on the screen, and the FCC doesn't say anything about that....
Just then the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders started yelling Everything You Know Is Wrong!-Weird Al
Who modded this insightful? It's just a half-assed retard attempting to take a pot-shot at personal freedoms. So now sexual liberty is equivalent to some nutjob fucking a watermelon? Eat shit and die, you conservative prick.
Don't like personal freedom, cocksucker? Go to China. Stop fucking up the civilized world.
You heard me. GET OUT.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
You misunderstand. It's not sex that's immoral. It's sex between Democrats that's immoral. Personally, I even condone Republican-Democrat sex (if they're married of course), but Democrat-Democrat sex... ewwwwww.
That would be the Irish domain suffix.
A prefix would come before the domain.
Bring back Sirius Punk!