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South American nations open fire on ICANN for 'illegal' sale of .amazon
- seu 7y agoOf course, if the company would have been called something like "Niagara Falls", or "Yosemite", or "Grand Canyon" and the US government protested, we know the result would have been very different. Just another example of how unjust and unequal in general the administration of domain names is.
- smabie 7y agoIt seems from the article that they just wanted to extract money out of Amazon. Moreover, they never gave a single reason on why they didn’t want Amazon to have the domain.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- input_sh 7y agoI vaguely remember something along the lines of using "Amazon isn't spelled Amazon in any of the countries in South America" as an argument. A pretty stupid argument if you ask me.
- mkl 7y agoIt's not even technically correct: Guyana's official language is English. (Though it just barely includes any of the Amazon basin.)
- rmsaksida 7y agoThis is what the ACTO requested [0]: - a joint steering committee (ACTO and Amazon) for .amazon, giving ACTO countries the right to veto domains; - delegation of second-level domains to ACTO countries; - commitment from Amazon not to register domains that have significance to the region. I haven't seen any news that suggest they were trying to extract money out of Amazon. It was Amazon that was flaunting money at ACTO. [0] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/zaluar-to-chalaby-23apr19-en.pdf https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/zaluar-..., http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/pt-BR/notas-a-imprensa/20312-solicitacao-de-atribuicao-de-dominio-de-primeiro-nivel-amazon http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/pt-BR/notas-a-imprensa/20312-sol...
- ryanlol 7y agoIf the US government wanted to protest, they’d probably do so in a far less incompetent manner. >ACTO insisted on a face-to-face meeting and Marby duly got on a plane to Brasilia. He was in his hotel room in Brazil’s capital when he was told the meeting had been cancelled due to the political situation in Venezuela. In the end the ACTO folks didn’t even care enough to meet with the ICANN CEO who had traveled all the way to Brasilia to meet them. I can’t buy the Venezuela excuse, surely the ACTO gtld experts are not the same people who deal with Venezuela.
- rmsaksida 7y ago> I can’t buy the Venezuela excuse, surely the ACTO gtld experts are not the same people who deal with Venezuela. It was the foreign minister of Brazil who canceled the meeting, citing the tensions with Venezuela as the reason for cancelation. [0] [0] https://veja.abril.com.br/blog/radar/chanceler-cancela-reuniao-ceo-por-presenca-de-autoridades-venezuelanas/ https://veja.abril.com.br/blog/radar/chanceler-cancela-reuni...
- celeritascelery 7y agoSend in an underling then.
- rumanator 7y agoTensions don't change if you send the 2nd or 3rd in command instead of the foreign minister.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ryanlol 7y agoThe problem wasn’t that the FM was busy with more important stuff, it was that Brazil didn’t want to participate in negotiations where Venezuela was a party. But they also couldn’t be bothered to inform the other participants about this fact until it was way too late...
- labster 7y agoRight, the US Government would have paid a lot of money to buy the TLD, like they did when they signed a contract that assigned all of the trademarks for Yosemite, including "Yosemite National Park", to Aramark, and then wanted the trademark back.
- bobbiechen 7y agoWow, I hadn't heard of this. Link for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_National_Park_trademarks_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_National_Park_tradema...
- labster 7y agoAh, thanks for the link. Let me correct the record: Delaware North held the trademarks, Aramark was the new concessionaire that had to rename the Ahwanee Hotel, etc.
- perl4ever 7y agoI'm not an expert on Niagara Falls, but isn't it equally Canadian?
- mthoms 7y agoIt is. So this is probably not the best example by the parent (given that there would be yet another party trying to claim it). But I think the point they raised is still very good.
- perl4ever 7y agoI thought they were being sarcastic, so I'm not sure it's clear what point they raised. Also, people seem to think the US government does not act in a similar way.
- mthoms 7y agoI think they were suggesting that if the US objected to new TLD it would be a different process/outcome than when the South American countries objected.
- perl4ever 7y agoWell, the process of imagining things that support your prejudices is very broadly applicable. You'd think people would just get bored and jaded with it.
- mthoms 7y agoI have no idea what you're going on about. Who has prejudices? Me? The grandparent poster? What specifically are you in disagreement with? Regardless, I think you might be reading way too much into things.
- gist 7y ago> "Niagara Falls", or "Yosemite", or "Grand Canyon" and the US government protested Not even close to being true. I have actually dealt with the US Government and have gotten explicit permission from them for something very similar. Official letter from the appropriate agency 'not restricted by anything feel free to use'. > Just another example of how unjust and unequal in general the administration of domain names is. Typical internet furor over what you read that others say who are not properly informed about a topic. Nothing 'unjust' the process took years and years not exactly a back room deal.
- neiman 7y agoYou can find the agreement here: https://www.icann.org/resources/agreement/amazon-2019-12-19-en https://www.icann.org/resources/agreement/amazon-2019-12-19-... I would like to actually see the discussions leading to this agreement. The ideal version of ICANN is to be the "UN of the Internet", but its recent actions make it sustainable that there are too many commercial motives involved.
- ohashi 7y agoIdeal version of ICANN would replace nearly everyone there and turn it into a utility that is regulated. Put up TLDs for competitive bid every 10 years with binding commitments that last the entire time, no guaranteed renewal of contract for legacy TLDs. new gTLDs are out of the bag. I'd say they need some regulation, the thousand percent price increases isn't fair to consumers, but it's hard to put that cat back in the bag and get rid of them. Might need a neglected pool where registry operators simply bid to handle them, you know registration volume and price. They don't get any crazy fees to operate the neglected pool.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- travisoneill1 7y agoThis is stupid. These countries have no right to this TLD just because the forest of that name is located there. If they had wanted it they should have applied for it first. It is equally as stupid as saying that Jeff Bezos can't use the name "Amazon" because it is owned by the owners of the Amazon rainforest, or saying that Brazil can't name its rainforest "Amazon" because that is a Greek mythological term and, therefore, owned by Greece. Nobody owns the word "Amazon"
- StavrosK 7y agoGreek here, you can expect our lawsuit papers shortly.
- petre 7y agoIf the Greek started suing everyone over words and won, Greece would be a very wealthy nation, moneywise.
- noja 7y ago> Nobody owns There's the problem. The name exists, so somebody owns it. Who has more right to it? The countries with a big river with that name running through it, or the ecommerce startup from really not that long ago?
- cbg0 7y agoApparently, the answer is the highest bidder.
- Digit-Al 7y agoThey should be renamed ICAN'T.
- gsich 7y agoThey already have that nickname.
- larkeith 7y agoWe badly need a good replacement - ICANN has recently been making it abundantly clear how poor a choice it is to rely on an opaque, unaccountable centralized entity for something as crucial as DNS. Whether or not you agree with their decision, this whole saga fails to inspire confidence in their processes and long-term neutrality. A particularly concerning quote: "Those PICs were published months later but ICANN went out of its way to make sure they weren’t noticed: it published them on a sub-site that requires people to register to access information, instead of using its normal public comment process, and it made no public announcement about the publication, despite promising to do so."
- duckmysick 7y agoReminds me of the passage from the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about the demolition notice: "But the plans were on display..." "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." "That's the display department." "With a torch." "Ah, well the lights had probably gone." "So had the stairs." "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
- csense 7y agoWhat about [ENS](https://docs.ens.domains/ https://docs.ens.domains/)?
- ohashi 7y agoICANN is a captured organization and hasn't been acting in the best interest of the general public for ages. It needs to be reformed or replaced. The fact 'staff' make decisions and the board skirts any responsibility is a travesty. Their model of governance is a failure, they don't actually listen to people or build consensus. They operate in the shadows and even when it gets noticed, they ignore the public backlash.
- xur17 7y agohttps://handshake.org/ https://handshake.org/ ?
- rmsaksida 7y agoIMO South American countries should just ban the corporate-owned .amazon from local DNS. The least they can do is boycott the domain.
- celeritascelery 7y agoI really don’t want governments blocking my internet to fight their petty disputes.
- rmsaksida 7y agoI wouldn't care if .amazon was unreachable by local DNS, because I bet Amazon will give every significant service an equivalent amazon.com domain. They might add "aws.amazon" but I doubt they're taking away "aws.amazon.com". Balkanization would send an important message to ICANN.
- anoncake 7y agoThen how else should they enforce a law assigning the .amazon domain to its rightful owners? Not that anything would be blocked in the first place unless Jeff Bezos were stupid enough to actually use the domain for anything important.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mc32 7y agoThey can still get an “.amazonas” tld. It’s not like Spain has a .es and a .sp or the US has a .us and the .eu tld. If Amazon the company didn’t exist or it was called “the warehouse” these countries would give a rat’s ass about the .amazon gtld.
- phyzome 7y agoNo, that would be deemed too similar.
- cambalache 7y agoWho are "they"? Southamerican != Spanish speaking. There are English speaking and Portuguese speaking countries there.
- axaxs 7y agoIIRC, there's only one English speaking South American country, and the Amazon doesn't run through it. You could argue that 'some people in some countries' speak English, which is true, but the same is also true that a large amount of folks in the US speak Spanish, yet we don't try to claim .EU.
- cambalache 7y agoThe Amazon is not just the river and the basin it is also,most importantly, the rainforest which belongs to 8 countries (9 if you count France). You have Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English, and French plus several creole languages there. Guess whose language is the best one for a common denomination?
- axaxs 7y agoThat's an interesting point. I'm not saying you're wrong, just posing the following for thought: If a country/language picks a name for a place, that that place doesn't use, who owns it so to speak? That is, who 'owns' the word Germany? And by own I mean, makes some claim to it. It's hard for me as American perhaps because the 'lingua franca' is my native language. For example, I feel no sense of ownership of the words 'Estados Unitos', or Meiguo(sp?), and see them as belonging to other countries. Food for thought...
- zaptheimpaler 7y agoThis is a tabloid drama story for nerds.. a domain dispute over a hypothetical website jointly owned by multiple countries? That website doesn't even exist and probably was never on the radar until the domain came up. It is appealing to view the web like physical land and seeing this as a border dispute but it only goes so far. If the (non-existent, hypothetical) website is discoverable on search engines and the URL is published by the government's it works just as well
- dextralt 7y ago'Amazon' is an _English_ translation of a _Greek_ name given to an _Eurasian_ tribe. What claim do _South American_ nations have for it? I loathe to defend Amazon and ICANN of all the fucking things, but come on now. There are plenty of reasons to shit on these two, but not this nonsense. 'Illegal', lmao.
- onion2k 7y agoThe etymology of a word is a silly reason to deny assigning ownership of a TLD. How the word originated is far less important than how it's used. The case Brazil et al are making is that the global common understanding of "Amazon" is more theirs than Bezos'. In this case though it seems like the most common use for a .amazon domain would be to scam Amazon customers. Tourism could easily go under a .com. That'd be a good reason to assign it to Amazon. It'd be in the interests of people regardless of the company.
- fastball 7y agoEven given your second point, I would argue with the first, given that I think that globally, the company is more thought of when someone sees the word "Amazon" in 2020 than the rainforest.
- celeritascelery 7y agoThat’s exactly the situation the South American countries what to fight against.
- avsteele 7y agoSounds like Brazil was the one being unreasonable here. It looks like a shakedown of Amazon. Lest you think of Amazon as a big, powerful, org compared with Brazil, remember that the Brazilian government's budget for 2020 is over $900 billion dollars.
- cambalache 7y agoIt is not just Brazil, it is ACTO, there are 8 countries from South America there.
- kroltan 7y agoA monetary compensation was never requested, only shared rights to the TLD. AMZN was the one trying to throw materials at the issue to make it go away.
- CapacitorSet 7y agoThe world is running at full speed towards a dystopia where private companies are more powerful than entire countries.
- petre 7y agoWhat if these countries pass laws to require ISPs to rewrite the SOA for the .amazon domain and point it to an alternate root controlled by the ACTO? Morocco banned Google Maps after they displayed a border with Western Sahara. Now if one requests a Google map of Morocco from within .ma, they get a version without the border.
- cortesoft 7y agoLike the Dutch East India company?
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> Like the Dutch East India company? No, not like that. The East India Company had independent military power. ICANN does not.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoWhich appears to have been one of the main aims of WTO and most international trade deals over the last 30 or so years.
- zamadatix 7y agoThe root problem isn't who should operate individual gTLDs (ICANN always owns it) it's that gTLDs aren't restricted in ways that make it so people aren't worried about who is operating it. In an ideal DNS ACTO would be ecstatic someone else is footing the bill for the gTLD and it's operation not worried about what that means for their right to use it.
- saalweachter 7y agoI personally blame ICANN more than the corporations here. No individual entity -- person, place or corporation -- needs a TLD. They're TLDs, they're for giant collections of people, places and things. But once ICANN says, "Hey, would you like to buy <.YOURCOMPANY>? It'd be a shame if someone else did.", most any company is going to say, "Goddammit, fine", and then once you've spent the money on it, you might as well start using it, with store.YOURCOMPANY and about.YOURCOMPANY and mail.YOURCOMPANY, and now the conventions of hierarchical domains and the very notion of URLs is meaningless. I do blame all of us webdevs for getting cutesy with with making the TLD part of your company/domain name.
- K0SM0S 7y ago> “No individual entity -- person, place or corporation -- needs a TLD. They're TLDs, they're for giant collections of people, places and things.” I would say it's either no one or everyone — I personally wouldn't mind if we could all get a tld and link that to a personal public IPv6 range and simple enough software to administer it. I think we should all be entitled to get that over internet, it belongs to all of us as a system.
- CydeWeys 7y agoThere are some compelling use cases for .brand TLDs, especially when a given brand is a large company that has lots of different websites. Take Barclays for example. They're a bank, so they're obviously especially sensitive to security issues, and they run a bunch of different websites. Just using websites of the form barclaysfoo.co.uk is obviously unsafe, because it's rife with phishing opportunities since you're training customers to accept these kinds of domains and then some phisher goes out and registers barclaysblah.co.uk and users don't think twice about entering their credentials there. Subdomains off barclays.co.uk are also not great, because cookies can be shared up to the domain level (intentionally or accidentally), and you don't want any risk of your potentially less secure marketing websites being compromised through CRSF or something and leaking access to sensitive login cookies on the actual bank's website. So the best solution here really is to get and use the .barclays TLD. That way, there's no possible cookie/session-sharing security exploits since every website is truly a different domain, and only Barclays itself can register .barclays domains so customers can have trust when they see a .barclays domain that it is actually the bank they're dealing with. Additionally, there's fun security things you can do at the TLD level, like globally applying HSTS preloading, that Barclays isn't doing (but should be) and that we are. And as for open TLDs, the existing generic namespaces like .com are heavily mined out and it's very expensive to acquire a decent domain name in them. So having all these other alternatives available now makes it much easier to get a decent domain for a reasonable cost, which is good for users (and bad for domainers, who I have no sympathy for). For example, I managed to pick up cyde.dev at the base registration cost, which I'll be putting some real content on at some point in the future. I think that's a pretty darn good, short, domain-specific domain name, and much better than anything I could've gotten on .com. cyde.com, by contrast, was registered way back in 2002, 4 years before I ended up going with my second choice of cydeweys.com. But I like cyde.dev better, so I'll be migrating stuff over to it. Full disclosure, I run .dev (but not .barclays!).
- brownbat 7y agoI am sheepishly conflicted. On the one hand, I get that domains and TLDs are important aspects of branding, people care about making sure terms are tied to the most salient endpoints. On the other hand... isn't this whole system a bit like some guy in a basement writing a list of words next to various numbers? Then we all just decided to tell our machines to listen to that guy? It feels weird to me to be angry at the phone book I chose to use. And if all popular indexing methods are subject to public debate, we end up in strange places. We might single out ICANN as special, more important, but given how many people go through search to land on websites, rather than typing domains directly, in some ways ICANN is just pushing one index in a crowded field. In some ways Google is more ICANN than ICANN. Google's top level results for amazon (and java and cheddar etc.) aren't places. If we don't really like how some guy maps symbols to symbols, maybe we should just make your own map that we do like better? If it is better, promote it, maybe it catches on. Namecoin and Tor basically do this, though they're limited to certain use cases. Some alternate DNS resolvers block/re-map known malicious sites. ICANN isn't forcing us to care about any of its decisions. I don't know, I have enormous uncertainty here, and "hey just abandon a core feature of the internet" is definitely too glib given how unsure I am about all this. But still, it's just an arbitrarily filled map. It feels really weird to me to be angry at a random lookup table. Maybe just walk away from it instead. EDIT: larkeith's top level comment also ends up at ICANN replacement, with far more sympathy and less bewilderment along the way, I respect that a lot. EDIT 2: Brevity. Still failed but trying.
- dnautics 7y agoIsn't the internet designed in such a way that if a consortium of eight countries doesn't like icann, they're free to start their own DNS authority and point their servers to that?
- lolc 7y agoForking DNS is the nuclear option. It could easily make establishment of new TLD impossible in practice.
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- shadowgovt 7y agoSo Brazil attempted to block the establishment of .amazon because of Snowden revelations that the CIA had wiretapped the president of Brazil's phone? That seems to suggest, if that causality is correct, that if Amazon weren't an American company, Brazil wouldn't have had any objection. So it's just a naked attempt to use a private company headquartered in a nation another nation is mad at for political horse trading and ICANN made the right decision.