Saudi Arabia opposes a number of domains

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has appealed to ICANN against the decision to delegate the new .baby and .vigrin root domains. These domains were intended for delegation to Johnson & Johnson and the Vigrin Group. Saudi Arabian authorities believe these domains could "encourage the creation of pornography online." The Saudi Commission for Communications and Information Technology, which is responsible for liaising with ICANN, previously filed 163 other complaints against a total of 31 domain extensions scheduled for delegation under the new gTLD program.

As stated in the complaint regarding the .baby zone by Johnson&Johnson, "we believe that there is a high risk of using these domains to host pornographic sites, as in the .xxx domain zone."

J&J's application is one of 1,930 accepted by the international non-profit organization ICANN under its new system for registering corporate top-level root domains. The new program stipulates that domains opened under it must be used for advertising or general corporate purposes and clearly states that they are not intended for hosting pornographic content.

Representatives of the second applicant, Virgin, say that the domain zone they have applied for is intended solely for brand promotion and the company will be the sole registrar of domains in it, which rules out the possibility of pornographic sites appearing in this zone.

Furthermore, Saudi Arabia objects to the registration of domains such as .wine, .vodka, .casino, .poker, .bar, and .pub on moral grounds. "We are concerned that these domains could be used to advertise alcohol," the country's IT ministry said in a statement.

The Arab IT regulator has also taken notice of applications for domain extensions containing sexually related terms. For example, Saudi Arabia insists on denying registration of the .dating, .hot, .sex, .porn, .sexy, and .gay domain extensions. Saudi authorities also have a negative attitude toward the use of religiously related terms in domain extension names. For example, ICANN has received complaints from the Arab country regarding applications for domains such as .catholic, .bible, .islam, .halal, and the like.