At any rate, the broadcast industry itself, the target of the quarter-century-old ruling referenced in this policy, has in recent years gone away from a simplistic policy of simply banning certain words without regard to context or purpose. Some network broadcasts, like the uncut versions of Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, and CBS's documentary on the events of September 11th, have included some of those seven words, letting the viewing public know that people who saw the World Trade Center towers collapse right in front of them didn't always confine their reactions to "Golly, gee, darn it!" And Supreme Court rulings have made it clear that the Internet is not to be regulated in the same manner as broadcasting -- the Communications Decency Act was overturned.

While it's true that the Neustar policy is not a flat ban on such words -- they reserve the right to "review" them for deletion -- in practice it amounts to a ban on words that Neustar doesn't like, without any regard for context and purpose, since how can they possibly establish the context and purpose of the use of a newly-registered domain which has yet to be put into use? This is even more unfair than the UDRP, in which at least the registrant has a chance to defend themselves.

My checking of the WHOIS indicates that in fact Neustar seems to be treating this as a flat ban; some of the obvious "obscene" domains are listed as still available, meaning that the likely multiple registration attempts have all been turned down.

However, the owner of with.us (who appears to be in Paris, France; what ever happened to the U.S. nexus requirement?) can thumb their nose at this policy if they wish by creating appropriate subdomains to create hostnames like dont.*.with.us (insert appropriate Carlin word)... there's nothing Neustar can do to stop it, and there goes the neighborhood...