!@*+# Domains Could Be Money-Spinner for Registrars.

The testbed phase of the newly-competitive domain name registration market is not yet over, and already the newly-appointed registrars have found themselves a fairly lucrative niche in the market - the registration of the so-called "seven dirty words" as domains. Network Solutions Inc, which held a monopoly on the registration of .com, .org and .net domain names until a month ago, has a self-imposed policy of not registering seven words it considers profane. But the arrival of CORE, the Council of Registrars, into the market last week will allow people to register domains containing these words.

Jonathon Robinson, CEO of UK registrar NetBenefit Ltd and deputy chair of CORE, said that CORE members would be able to register whatever was allowed by their local law. Nominet, the registry of .uk country-code domains, has no profanity restrictions, whereas testbed registrar Melbourne IT Pty Ltd operates out of Australia, a country which has recently announced draconian anti-obscenity laws to govern online material.

Issues such as obscene words in a non-English language are not considered by NSI, nor are regional variations or colorful language in non-US English. A well-publicized case concerning shitake mushrooms, coupled with the amount of Japanese companies with shit- prefixes, means at least one of the seven bans no longer applies. Many existing web sites have domain names considered far more offensive than any banned by NSI. CORE's Robinson said: "The issue is fraught with complications. NSI's restrictions are quite arbitrary. It will be up to individual CORE registrars to decide what they allow."

The thin registry/fat registrar shared registration system that is now in place means NSI cannot filter out undesirables from the registry. An NSI spokesperson said it would allow the seven words into its database, although it has no plans to change its own policy and will continue to fight the two lawsuits currently trying to force it to do so.