We have never known the Irish to be prudish or disapproving about sex (and have certainly not been affected personally by it) but get this: some guy in Ireland has been trying to register the domain names "porn.ie" and "pornography.ie" for four years and his application keeps getting denied. The reason the Irish Domain Registry (IEDR) gives him is "the proposed domain name must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality."
Right. Because there is nothing offensive on the Internet.
Anyway, the domain registry organization has no say over the content of the domains, just the names of them. So what they're declaring offensive here are two synonymous nouns. Your man tested this by registering "orn.ie" and then providing pornographic content at "p.orn.ie," which was not deemed objectionable by the IEDR.
The pornographer in question thought it was so absurd that those words were deemed offensive that he took the IEDR to court.
At first, the IEDR denied any knowledge of these domain names being refused. When proof was produced, they responded with mentions of child pornography, but generally didn't seem interested in discussing the matter. Nonetheless, the pornographer lost the case.
They found that the words "pornography" and "porn" were not in themselves offensive, however:
Both Parties recognise that the Respondent is a body carrying out functions of a public nature, and is the only body that administers the public resource that is the .ie Internet domain. It would appear therefore that there is no other candidate for the role of arbiter of public policy in respect of the .ie domain space except the Respondent itself.
For reasons given above, in the absence of any other source of public policy and while the logic may appear cyclical, the public policy that this tribunal must apply is the policy of the Respondent. It would not be appropriate for this Appeal tribunal to take upon itself the role of arbiter of public policy.
It follows that this tribunal must also conclude that the registration of either or would be contrary to the public policy governing the .ie domain space as found in the Respondent’s policies.
In short, the IEDR are the law when it comes to domain names, and what they say goes. The denied pornographer ends his posting on sex.ie (which apparently is OK with the IEDR) with this: "Who says Catholic Ireland is dead?"
Related:
Porn Poll: How Do You Like Your Porn?