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Whether George Carlin's seven filthy words have a future on the Internet may depend upon the outcome of lawsuits in California and New Hampshire.
Domain-name registrar Network Solutions is defending itself against two separate legal challenges to the company's policy of refusing to sell the notorious domain names it calls the Network Seven.
A California judge issued a temporary injunction on 22 April, freezing a number of domains based on the verboten words. A New Hampshire case is pending.
Both lawsuits target an official Network Solutions policy prohibiting the registration of domain names that include the the seven dirty words and their permutations already banned on US radio and television.
Network Solutions said the lawsuits are the first legal challenges to a policy that has been in force since 1996. The company maintains it was perfectly within its rights to adopt such a policy.
"Our corporate position at the time was that we needed to have some kind of loose guidelines," said David Graves, director of business affairs for Network Solutions. "Looking around at the models, one that presented itself that provided the best working model at the time was the broadcast standard."
Since a 1978 decision by the US Supreme Court, the Federal Communications Commission has restricted the use of the seven dirty words in broadcasting.
Network Solutions limits its restrictions to six, making an exception for the word shit, after Japanese domain registrants said they depended on that string of characters for the phonetic English spelling of certain Japanese words, including shitake.com.
"This action is brought to redress unlawful deprivations of the plaintiff's right to freedom of speech, equal protection, and the due process of the law," plaintiff Lynn Haberstroh said in a complaint filed 20 January in US District Court of New Hampshire.
Haberstroh, who could not be reached for comment, wants the court to find the Network Solutions policy unconstitutional and order the company to approve a set of name registrations Haberstroh is seeking.
Sexy domain names have proven very lucrative for some owners. For example, sex.com brings in some US$100 million a year for its owner.
When an individual attempts to register a domain that contains the words in question they receive the following notice: __"Network Solutions has a right founded in the First Amendment to the US Constitution to refuse to register, and thereby publish, on the Internet registry of domain names words that it deems to be inappropriate. Additionally, Network Solutions' outside counsel has advised us that the Supreme Court of the United States has held that no corporation can be compelled to engage in publication which that corporation finds to be inappropriate."
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