The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has objected to a number of proposed new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) including .porn, .sexy, .wine, .bar and .bible, according to records of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). "Many societies and cultures consider homosexuality to be contrary to their culture, morality or religion. The creation of a gTLD string which promotes homosexuality will be offensive to these societies and cultures," says Saudi Arabia's Communication and Information Technology Commission.
Read full story: Computerworld
Related topics: Censorship, ICANN, Internet Governance, Top-Level Domains
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Is it Coca-cola in the King's glass in this video?
This is based on an article about Saudi Arabia's equivalent of Dr.Ruth - Dr.Wedad Lootah. Saudi Arabia thus has what they consider a major problem (though of course an artefact of rigid gender separation and raging hormones)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/world/middleeast/06dubai.html?pagewanted=all
In Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men, which affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage, Ms. Lootah said.
“Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don’t know anything else,” Ms. Lootah said. “This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.”
Do the most repressed countries of the world get veto power over what the rest of the world does online?
At this stage, they just say: "we diasagree" and they give a reason. This is not an objection.
Let's hope the succeed there shouldn't be any .gay domain, Saudis are right when they say that it is offensive to all societies and cultures. It is harder to understand their objection to .baby saying that it will be used for pornography, I doubt child pornographers would use .baby for their images, not sure how Saudis worked that out.
Backward, superstitious, homophobic cultures, maybe. There are plenty of more enlightened ones, though.