more on the Scunthorpe Problem

It's sort of fascinating to read all the examples of the Scunthorpe problem. I suppose globalization and the shrinking of the world would lead to more collisions between something that is a curse word in one language and an innocuous acronym or a word within a word, in another. Like trying to register shitakemushrooms.com.

When the regulator then finds out that a false positive has occurred, and apologetically carves out an exception for Scunthorpe or the residents of Penistone, South Yorkshire, an interesting problem would be if Scunthorpe goes on to use their special status to cuss up a storm! Woo hoo! There is an analogy in there somewhere with free riders who disingenuously take advantage of the privacy afforded by strong encryption and carry on genuinely bad things because they know they can get away with it. Too much caution has problems and not enough caution has different problems.