19 ms·
Amazon wins ‘.amazon’ domain name, aggravating South American region
- thg 7y agoFull article title is Amazon wins ‘.amazon’ domain name, aggravating South American region and undermining digital commons I had to cut it down as it wouldn't fit otherwise (26 too long).
- whymauri 7y agoDid Amazon (the company) really need this? I don't get it. It feels like bullying for no real purpose.
- swixm 7y agoDoes Google really need .google? They don't, but why not get it if it's available? I find these new TLDs to be abhorrent, but if they exist, why not own one if you can?
- stephenr 7y agoGoogle isn’t the English name of a huge rainforest.
- sova 7y agofatal flaw not naming your global conglomerate after a physical location. why not just incorporate a small territory in the pacific, dub it "google republic" and then go for .google?
- yayana 7y agoWith toll free numbers every land grab makes sense to the buyer, but no one else can take .google and existence of this and other brand TLDs will suck for their product experiences.
- bsza 7y agoOther than a countermeasure against phishing, perhaps.
- booleandilemma 7y agoIf only to prevent someone from creating a site with the name dontshopat.amazon, fuck.amazon, betterthan.amazon, etc. It could be a defensive thing.
- dalai 7y agoThey still don't need exclusive rights to the TLD. I doubt Brazil or one of the other eight countries was planning to create such domains.
- lozenge 7y agoThey would have been able to object to ICANN when the other application for .amazon was put in.
- bonestamp2 7y agoCould also be a security issue. Creating one of those sites would surely help nefarious actors create amazon related scam sites. If amazon controls the TLD then only amazon can create .amazon sites.
- marvin-83 7y agoI think the defensive aspect is underestimated. I know from personal experience that carving out a clear online domain name is a lot harder with the expansion of tlds. Also, I expect phishing sites will have an ever easier time registering convincing domains. So we're going to end up relying on browser blacklisting... not exactly an improvement for security.
- is_true 7y agoDid anyone needed this? I don't think so. In my country we have a cctld for tourism and most companies don't care neither do clients.
- kzrdude 7y agoDoes anyone need the custom TLDs?
- dodobirdlord 7y agoWell, Amazon asked for it to begin with, and the involved South American nations filed to have it blocked. It doesn't seem at all like bullying for Amazon to continue to make their case instead of just abandoning it. Much like the .aws TLD, this provides some level of protection against phishing attacks and makes obvious when a page is an authentic Amazon page.
- rendall 7y agoThis is pretty astonishing. Clearly, .amazon was intended to refer to the geographical region, given that no other corporations have their name as a top-level domain.
- archgoon 7y ago>given that no other corporations have their name as a top-level domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.google
- vitorgrs 7y agohttp://surface.microsoft http://surface.microsoft
- frenchman99 7y agoRedirects to https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/surface https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/surface though
- dazc 7y agoActually: https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-ca https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-ca and then to: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/surface https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/surface Money well spent there?
- dvh 7y agoShouldn't that domain name go to Greece?
- StavrosK 7y agoAs a Greek, I'd say we don't particularly feel a need to have every mythological name. It seems to me that the people currently living in the region with that name deserve and could use it more.
- rgoulter 7y agoNah. But that reminds me of the SMBC comic from 2012 (when SOPA was being discussed), about how India invented the number zero and so by ad absurdum of 'IP belongs to content creators', "owns" half of all digital data. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-08-29 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-08-29
- gingabriska 7y agoMaybe zero the figure was invented in India but the notion of zero was known before that without putting a name for it.
- throwaway8879 7y agoSomewhat tangential, but how many internet users(except us old-timers) really make use of domain names in their use/workflow these days? I wonder if there's some research on this. I'd assume that most of the internet population have their smartphones/app ecosystems for getting to Amazon or even looking up hypothetical Brazilian tourist info through Google. I understand why both sides want the TLD but I'm not sure what significant usefulness it has other than property rights regarding domain names and the future of how these cases will be settled.
- pergadad 7y agoMore clear to write " go to brazil.amazon" than "please Google 'Brazil Amazon official tourism board"
- justaaron 7y agoThe Amazon and its tributaries flow through the countries of Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean 6, 437 kilometers (4,000 miles) from the Amazon's headwaters high in the Andes mountains of Peru. So, no it's not the exclusive property of Brazil.
- seszett 7y agoHaving it as a tld makes it clear, since you could easily have brazil.amazon, bolivia.amazon, peru.amazon, etc. That's more hierarchically correct than amazon.com.br, amazon.bo, amazon.pe. For most people though I don't think it makes a difference, as I don't think DNS hierarchy is well understood by most internet users.
- newphonewhodis 7y agoI get what you are saying, however, Brazil(br) "hosts"-has it in- The Amazon; as do the other countries. I would expect a resolver to go to a top level namespace- i.e. a country that has people to run the infrastructure and not a river- and all those places scope out certain features contained with in them. In my mind: .(root server) > (global feature/country/company) > (feature/host) e.g. . > .br > amazon makes more sense than . > amazon > ccTLD. I think a better example for your point would be `.ocean` as the logical way to divided it would be pacific.ocean, atlantic.ocean, etc. however no one entity "owns" the whole or said parts of the ocean and dolphins do not want to administer DNS servers. That said, naming things is hard.
- vitorgrs 7y agoI'm Brazilian, and I'm not sure .amazon would be useful for us. Here, we don't call Amazon rainforest, well, amazon. We call "Amazônia" and in Spanish "Amazonia". I don't see how Brazil or Peru would use .amazon for public interests, unless it's targeted for international purposes (read: tourism). But let's be honest, the "protection and awareness" is needed here on South America, where they are destroying it.
- thrw374758 7y agoIt’s about money. The TLD is worth a lot. While I think .amzn would be more appropriate there is also a significant phishing risk for .amazon to be open to the public. Not everyone uses a password manager.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoThey wanted the tld for tourism.
- geezerjay 7y ago> They wanted the tld for tourism. How many sites are they expecting to operate in order to justify a dedicated tld ?
- reitzensteinm 7y agoHow many sites does Amazon need?
- Phillipharryt 7y agoPresumably even if they don't intend to use the tld for lots of sites (perhaps stores could have subdomains) they'll be using the tld as a way of proving authenticity. Only they can create links with .amazon so they can assure customers of their safety from phishing etc.
- kadira 7y agoLOL, no shit. must be proud to be working in a shitty company.
- cf498 7y ago>The company had previously proposed providing USD$5,000,000 worth of Amazon products and services as compensation to the states, but this offer was not included in the latest proposal. Thats rather close to being comedic. 5m in Amazon gift cards.
- ErikAugust 7y ago"But this offer was not included in the latest proposal" is also brutal.
- henvic 7y agoAs a Brazilian, I'm pretty happy with this. 1. Corrupt states haven't gained control over an important TLD. 2. Corrupt states aren't getting gift cards that would be used for making the lives of corrupt officials better. 3. Corrupt states trying to surf in Amazon.com's success lost.
- JetSpiegel 7y agoCorrupt Corporate Executives won over Corrupt Governments. Should we celebrate this? The corrupt governments can lose elections, but Bezos is a tyrant for life.
- henvic 7y agoIs this a joke? If you disagree with Amazon (that is doing nothing corrupt in this matter) just stop using it and you're good. Good luck getting rid of your corrupt government, if you live in the middle of the forest. Bezos is no tyrant. He is where he is because he satisfied people who willingly made his company a lot of money. You can vote to put Bezos out of business by stopping to use his services. Good luck voting once every four years to get rid of corrupt government officials. Good luck believing elections aren't arranged (especially if you live in the middle of the jungle in a highly violent place). Let's stop drinking the Kool-Aid... shall we?
- 7y ago
- justaaron 7y agoThe company representing that which is destroying the river-basins ecosystem. (unfettered capitalism with-regards-to what are effectively planetary lungs.) 200,000 acres of Amazonian rainforest are burned every day circa 2019, but hey: next day delivery, frappucinos, netflix, and my comfort zone...
- justaaron 7y ago*representing concrete metaphor. I have zero evidence on Amazon's business practices being directly related to deforestation. having said that, Bezos, as the worlds richest man, is in a huge position to do something about the environmental catastrophe we are bringing upon ourselves, and so far he's appearing preoccupied with gaining the US military machine as his biggest client. He appears to have put literally no effort into changing businesses practices in the slightest, with regards to packaging, delivery means, etc
- geezerjay 7y ago> The company representing that which is destroying the river-basins ecosystem. If any organization represents the destruction of Amazon's river basin ecosystem, those organizations are exclusively the state institutions of the 9 countries that cover that area. They are the sole responsible entities that decide which activities are and are not allowed, and how to enforce their rules to punish those who break them.
- paulryanrogers 7y agoTechnically true, though the history of corporations like United Fruit and East India Company suggest those governments do not operate in a vacuum.
- Myrmornis 7y agohttps://icannwiki.org/ICANN_Board https://icannwiki.org/ICANN_Board Note that they have one Mexican, one El Salvadorean, but no South Americans. Also note that the only African is a Tunisian ex-Google employee. And the only east or south-east Asian appears to be Japanese. Why are we letting this group of business people make decisions about global internet? Why not, for example, scientists from the different countries?
- geezerjay 7y ago> Why are we letting this group of business people make decisions about global internet? Whether you like it or not, those "global businesses" do have an internet presence that's unquestionably more extensive than some countries. It would not be fair if organizations or countries that clearly are not interested in having a say on any issue regarding the global internet would have more of a say in these issues than those whose livelihood is the internet.
- paulryanrogers 7y agoHopefully the Internet is more than just about jobs and business. FWIW, it's said that .int (international) never gained momentum for these globe-spanning organisations.
- growtofill 7y agoWhat’s wrong with .com/.net/.org?
- pwodhouse 7y agoIIRC Those are governed by the US; they aren't truly international
- growtofill 7y agoValid point, thank you. I wonder who would govern a truly international TLD then. UN? New body?
- marvindanig 7y agoAmazon did the same thing to the '.book' top level domain name. Like they own the business vertical of books for the world now. IMO it is critical to split the company and take away these public properties from them.
- whoisthisfor 7y agoWho ever owns .wedding owns the business vertical for weddings? This just doesn't add up. There might be good reasons to split Amazon up, but this isn't one of them.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoNo, the argument is that Amazon is not the only organisation with a rightful interest in the ".book" top level domain and so should not have been granted exclusive control over it. I guess the second argument is that the arrogance displayed in saying things like "no, there shouldn't be any commons on the internet" (which is what closing such a generic tld does) is evidence that they have grown beyond what is healthy for society.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoI kinda wish the Amazon region companies would band together to block the domain nationally, but I guess that won't happen.
- Bedon292 7y agoThe article states that the rules changed in 2011 that allowed Amazon to purchase the domain. Which they attempted to do in 2012. At what point in time would the Amazon region have been able to purchase it? Having a hard time looking up what the rules might have been, but I would think they could have gotten it issued before then, under old rules could they not have? Seems like there wasn't interest in the domain until someone else proposed it, or were they also working on it too?
- souterrain 7y agoI continue to be against this and similar transactions as it is antithetical to the hierarchical design of DNS. We are approaching a model akin to AOL keywords. Instead of a business directly controlling the namespace, we have a quasi-public institution that likely will continue to act at the behest of corporate interests. For those who say the ship has sailed: I say this is only another chipping away at the democratic nature of the net. We must push back, or the beatings will continue.
- zeroxfe 7y agoUm... curious to hear what the alternative is. Fully democratized decentralized naming simply lets the powerful squat on all the good names. It's the tyranny of structurelessness.
- thingification 7y agoMaybe this has been done already and has been ineffective for some reason, but I guess the alternative is an organisation - maybe a different quasi-public institution - whose charter explicitly includes and emphasizes looking after the interests of institutions other than profit-making corporations? That is a thing that happens, and it has a real effect. Those organisational charters inevitably reflect some underlying ethical system, and I think the role of those ethics in influencing organisations and their members is still under-appreciated in some contexts (I'm certainly not saying that free market economics or libertarianism - for example - don't have any ethical system, by the way - more the contrary). For example, over here, picking maybe the most visible examples, the NHS, Channel 4, and the BBC - and many of the people who work for them are heavily influenced by the ethical ideas behind them.
- ken 7y agoWhat's a "good name"? Would "amazon.com" be considered one, if Bezos hadn't picked it? The current hierarchy is pretty weird. US GOVernment gets one, and US MILitary gets a separate one, and all US COMmercial entities get one, and most of the rest are non-specified ORGanizations, and the rest of the world gets to build under their 2-letter country codes. Except when company in San Francisco thinks it's cool to use one of those country codes to spell the end of a word, of course. Ask any person to draw a diagram which includes all groups (and potential groups) in the world, and nobody will ever come up with what we've got now. I don't see an obvious solution. It's a bad idea to let companies create their own top level domains (especially when it's taken from a region of indigenous peoples whose land is threatened!), but maintaining the old status quo doesn't seem like such a great idea, either. Have there been any serious proposals to overhaul the structure of DNS names?
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoIf they can get .amazon, it stands to reason we all deserve our own TLD. I’m actually for this.
- pwodhouse 7y agoIt's called a gTLD and anyone can apply for one.
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoBut only the rich can pull strings and get their own? Sort of like the “public comment” part of city planning: there to distract from a committee stacked with real estate developers.
- vntok 7y agoIt's not a question of pulling strings, it's a question of being able and willing to maintain a complex piece of software and hardware after you get the terminaison.
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoSounds like capital to me.
- nightwing 7y agoDo you suggest someone else should pay for you to maintain the hardware for your tld? If enough people are interested in your tld, you already will get the capital to maintain it, if not, what's the point of having it?
- kerkeslager 7y agoThis is awful, but I'm much more angry that they own the .book TLD.
- drusepth 7y agoYeah! They're depriving it from Facebook!
- kerkeslager 7y agoOr, you know, the IFLA[1] or some organization which at least makes a passable pretense of have the best interests of people in mind. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Federation_of_Library_Associations_and_Institutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Federation_of_Li...
- franzwong 7y agoAmazon can rent the domain name from the governments of South America.
- sova 7y agoWhoa man get your business as usual talk out of here, this is Amazon and super duper special bro!
- dodobirdlord 7y agoIf that would be the end result of the domain being awarded to the governments then the domain should be awarded to Amazon.
- legohead 7y agoLots of angry people in here which I am a bit surprised at. Have you all forgotten what it was like before all these new TLDs became available? You couldn't find a decent domain due to squatters. This affected everyone from the layman to startups. What is the entire region of the geographical Amazon going to do with a whole TLD? How is that going to possibly improve their situation? With this new TLD expansion, they have so many more options to work with now: Amazon.whatever. If they really cared about TLDs so much, why not get .forest? .amazonia?
- wolco 7y agoHas that changed? You are not getting an amazon domain. Names like .forest usually cost 10x more than .coms the trust in .forest is as high as .info
- deelly 7y ago>> What is the entire region of the geographical Amazon going to do with a whole TLD? 'Therefore we decide, that you don't need whole TLD. This company (whoa, with money!) will use it better'
- fastball 7y agoOC's point is that these countries can take literally any other ccTLD they want. Brazil can take .brasil and then have amazon.brasil, which makes more sense to me anyway. But if you start to let people argue incessantly over who gets what ccTLD, the end result is that there just aren't going to be very many ccTLDs. OC is saying "treat ccTLD's like we treated .com's: first come first serve" and you'll end up with a much richer variety of domains.
- solidasparagus 7y agoHow would you like it to be decided? I'm not going to say I love the slow ICANN process, but it was designed to allow all stakeholders to have their say while trying to prevent endless deadlock. This application has been in the works for 7 years. There have been many appeals of various kinds. The process is, as far as I can tell, extremely transparent. At the core of the debate is whether Amazon is a brand or a location. It's clearly both. Then the question is how to structure the shared governance of the TLD. According to the Amazon.com proposal email [1], ACTO is objecting to the current proposal. Several ACTO member states have submitted proposals individually, but there is no joint proposal (according to the email from Amazon.com). I couldn't find any ACTO joint proposal - they only seem to agree on blocking or delaying Amazon.com's proposal [2][3][4]. ICANN has a responsibility to make a decision at some point. Call me crazy, but I have very low confidence in ACTO's ability to run the TLD given that seven years into this process, we don't have a joint ACTO proposal [1] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/huseman-to-chalaby-17apr19-en.pdf https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/huseman... [2] https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2019-05-15-en#1.c https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2... [3] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/mendoza-to-chalaby-marby-05nov18-en.pdf https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/mendoza... [4] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/mena-to-ismail-05mar19-en.pdf https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/mena-to...
- i_am_shattered 7y agoIs there a chance of getting the following chances now? www.shopping.amazon, www.webservices.amazon etc.?
- marvin-83 7y agoProbably aws.amazon rather than webservices. They've invested a lot of time branding the acronym AWS, I don't see them rolling that back now. As for whether they make those the new generic addresses... I'm not sure. I think they are more likely to use the new tld for internal dns and keep their existing public names.
- fwip 7y agoAlternate title: Corporation wins '.amazon' domain name, aggravating the Amazon.
- geofffox 7y agoThe first computer graphics program I used in the early 80s on Cromemco hardware running their "ix" flavor os was called Amazon.
- herostratus101 7y agoIf you're a stickler for grammar, this is a misuse of the verb "aggravate."