Mark Knopfler, lead singer of Dire Straits, performs at the Nelson Mandela concert in June 1988. A Halifax radio station is planning a marathon of the unedited version of the hit Money for Nothing. (Photo by Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A Halifax rock radio station was set to play a banned version of a Dire Straits song on repeat Friday night.

Q104 FM was protesting a decision this week by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. It ruled the 25-year-old song Money for Nothing violates the industry's code of ethics because the lyrics include the word "faggot."

The ban applies to every private Canadian radio station.

"When a song has played for 25 years without incident, it meets community standards," JC Douglas, program director for Q104, said earlier Friday in a news release.

Q104 said members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community will be on hand for its marathon of the song, which Douglas noted is satirical in nature. As a sign of protest and in defence of freedom of speech, Q104 planned to broadcast the Dire Straits song over and over from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. AT Friday.

Douglas said the council's decision could end up trivializing the work done by the LGBT community to further its cause "by creating a sense of excessive political correctness."

A similar marathon was being planned by K-97, a classic hits radio station in Edmonton.

Last year, a listener to radio station CHOZ-FM in St. John's complained that the 1980s rock song includes the word "faggot" in its lyrics and is discriminatory to gays.

"Community standards when it comes to art are not always completely pure and sanitized," Douglas told CBC News on Friday. "Sometimes there's a little ugliness involved, and that word is clearly ugly."

Kevin Kindred doesn't like the word either, but the gay activist doesn't think banning words from songs is the way to go.

"It's much better to look at them, try to understand them," said Kindred. "If we still find them offensive, we can complain to our radio station and expect them to take the views of their audience seriously."

Douglas believes the word isn't used in a derogatory way.

"The context of the song calls for the use of the word, that it's not used in an abusive or damaging sense, and it's actually portraying a character who can clearly be seen to be the brunt of a joke as opposed to the gay community being the brunt of any defamatory comments," said Douglas.

"The original album length of the song is about seven and a half minutes, so I'm thinking we'll be playing it eight times back to back to back, so I hope you like that Mark Knopfler riff," said Douglas.

Kindred said the gay community has mixed reactions to the protest.

"I think they're doing the right thing by making a point," said Kindred. "I wouldn't want to hear that song repeatedly for an hour."

By broadcasting the unedited version of the song, Q104 is opening itself up to possible reprimands by the Broadcast Standards Council. That could include having to air an apology — only if a listener complains.

(With files from The Canadian Press)