Turkey forbids 138 words for domain names
The Turkish registry (nic.tr) has announced they want to forbid 138 words regarding domain name registrations. This means a domain name may no longer contain such words. Via this proposal the Turkish registry wants to ban all sexual loaded content via names which are hosted in Turkey. Because of this decision several sites, which domain names contain such words but which haven’t got anything to do with eroticism, will be in trouble.
This new rule would apply for all domain names which are hosted in Turkey. The extension under which the domain name is registered won’t matter. A .com name which contains such a word and which is hosted in Turkey is facing a problem. If the exact same name is hosted in the United States, nothing’s going on. Because of this unexpected new rule many websites will soon get in trouble.
For instance, the domain names “donanimalemi.com” (hardwareworld.com) and “sanaldestekunitesi.com,” (virtualsupportunit.com) would seize to exist under their current name because the first one contains the word ‘animal’ and the second one contains the word ‘anal’, 2 words which are on the ‘forbidden words’ list, although it’s rather obvious those 2 websites haven’t got anything to do with sex or eroticism. However this is the main problem, no one checks the content of the website, only the domain name is being checked. Since this rule will only apply for domain names hosted in Turkey, there’s a huge chance many companies and individuals will transfer their hosting to a foreign company. So probably the Turkish hosting companies will become the main victim of this new rule.
Other forbidden English words are for example beat, escort, homemade, hot, nubile, free and teen. Also English abbreviations such as ‘pic’, short for picture won’t be allowed any more since pic means bastard in Turkish. Also the past tense of the verb ‘to get’ won’t be allowed any longer since ‘got’ means butt in Turkish. Websites can also no longer contain the number 31 since this is Turkish slang for masturbation.