back to article Brazilians strip Amazon of brazen .amazon gTLD grab bid

Web supermarket Amazon's bid to create new top-level domain name .amazon has hit a dead end. Committee members of internet overlord ICANN - which oversees the world's DNS and other such technical stuff - rejected the e-tailer's application to control and administer .amazon. Non-profit ICANN is in the middle of flogging new …

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  1. Gordon Pryra

    Best that pissed ICCAN off

    Setting a precedent like this must hurt.

    Allowing common sense any footing may hurt their plans for continued printing of money....

    1. Gordon Pryra

      Re: Best that pissed ICCAN off

      Have to add a second note, allowing a retailer to own the .shop domain is also madness.

      While ICANN are in the happy environment of effectively owning the domain name money press, its pretty much only with the say so of the rest of the world.

      A few stupid decisions here for a fast buck could conceivably wreck this for them.

      Greed tends to be a good strategy for the short term only

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Best that pissed ICCAN off

        Indeed. If common sense could strike a second unlikely victory to protect other words that were indisputably real world things or words in everyday usage before a corporation decided to borrow the name that would be nice.

        Apple, Play, Android, Galaxy, etc might primarily conjure up thoughts of products now, but in 20 years? Give precedent to the fact that these have been in the dictionary for far longer than the marketing departments have had their grubby little mitts on them.

        In fairness, if a company can create an acronym or make up a word and turn it into a commonly known brand then they probably deserve their TLD as it would have been worthless without their input.

  2. Nigel 11

    Why on earth does amazon think a .amazon domain is even worth arguing about?

    I type "amaz" into my browser and it auto-completes. (Like "ther" for this site, "goo" for google, etc.) And if I don't know a web address, "goo" will find it for me pdq.

    1. Gulraj Rijhwani
      FAIL

      Why does Amazon do anything?

      Because they can...

    2. John Sturdy

      Yes, I was wondering how many people would by from it as "amazon" who wouldn't buy from it as "amazon.com". But it's presumably more about selling registrations within the tld.

  3. Red Bren
    Devil

    Can I register .bastards?

    I'm sure there's demand for

    icannaretheiving.bastards

    gchqarespying.bastards

    ukgovareuseless.bastards

    And many more...

    1. chuBb.
      Devil

      Re: Can I register .bastards?

      After watching nathan barley i wanted to register isa.co.ck, massive.co.ck and loadof.co.ck and sell sub domains off them, turns out .co.ck's are quite expensive to register (plus you need to be a resident of the cook islands or NZ...)

      1. Crazy Operations Guy

        Re: Can I register .bastards?

        the co.ck registrar is quite keen on that kind of thing and will deny you registration immediately and keep the registration fee for wasting their time.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Can I register .bastards?

      You forgot allcoppersare

    3. Herby

      Re: Can I register .bastards?

      You obviously have the wrong TLD. Properly (in the IT context) it should be:

      .bofh

      Then we can all get second levels after Simon approves.

  4. rcorrect
    Big Brother

    Anyone want to bet...

    ...on when a government will seize it's first gTLD?

    1. Gulraj Rijhwani
      Alert

      Re: Anyone want to bet...

      ICANN is supposed ot be internationally neutral, but it originated in America, and is run from America. I will be very surprised if any other government than the US could achive such a thing.

  5. Ian 62

    Just a question. If Amazon (or other retailer) fails to secure the rights to whatever gTLD they think belongs to them, what stops who ever does secure it from allowing sites like

    www.ihate.amazon

    www.itcaughtfireagain.iphone

    www.crashedmyditchfinder.rangerover

    www.bunchofravinglooniesare.thegreenparty

    Do the domain squatting rules apply? Because copyright and trademark laws wont apply as that didnt give them reason enough to secure the name in the first place?

    1. pepper

      Amazon might be the only one that wants the domain, but the countries that harbour the river dont as much want the domain as in that they want to protect the name of the river. Hence the domain might end up not being used at all.

      1. Grave

        yeah except its called "amazonas" in those countries. sounds more like an extortion racket by a corrupt third world government

        1. Don Jefe
          FAIL

          @Grave

          yeah except its called "amazonas" in those countries. sounds more like an extortion racket by a corrupt third world government

          As opposed to what; an extortion racket run by a corrupt 'first world' government?

          1. Grave

            Re: @Grave

            and what was your point again?? where do i state first world government is any better?

            not the point. stupid is strong with this one.

        2. Daniel B.
          Facepalm

          @Grave

          yeah except its called "amazonas" in those countries. sounds more like an extortion racket by a corrupt third world government

          Yes, it's called Amazonas in both Spanish and Portuguese, but that doesn't mean you don't have a right to the English name, especially as it is the most used language on the 'net. Should the Russian Federation give up their right to .ru and be left only with the Cyrillic alphabet version of their ccTLD? Is Wales less entitled to .wales than .cymru? Should Mexico City have no rights to "Mexico City" because it's called "Ciudad de México" in Spanish?

          1. Grave

            Re: @Grave

            thats what country code top-level domains are for :rolleyes:

            how are you going to argue about locations which share the same name??

            so which of these should have the right for New York: New York in Lincolnshire, New York in North Yorkshire, New York in Tyne and Wear, New York in Kentucky, New York in Texas or New York in New York?

            and if you dolts insist - why shouldn't amazon belong to a nation of all-female warriors from greek mythology? (or a group of people representing such an idea)

            1. pepper

              Re: @Grave

              Gravy, why should any of those have a right to that name at all on the net? Why would any of them wish to use it and not something more descriptive? New York(USA) uses New York City(NYC), and I think that makes it quite clear for foreigners like me what it actually is.

              Then again, I refuse to call it anything but New Amsterdam, bloody peasant rebels!

              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_IUPInEuc

      2. oiseau
        Thumb Up

        Name protection

        "Amazon might be the only one that wants the domain, but the countries that harbour the river dont as much want the domain as in that they want to protect the name ..."

        Indeed ...

        Fortunately, same thing happened to the intended *.patagonia registration.

      3. naw

        So exactly which of these 6 countries Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil is claiming the right to own the .Amazon TLD? What do the others think about it? I suspect that if successful, the owner of .Amazon might be looking to sell the Domain to a certain online Retailer. $$$$$$$

    2. Gordon Pryra

      @Ian 62

      The whole point to the additional "custom" TLD's is to force companies to buy every permutation of brand name and negative name they can think of to protect their own brand.

      Luckily people are stupid and will only ever use/understand .com so mostly these will never see the light of day nor a search engine near you

    3. Nigel 11
      WTF?

      But why bother? Why should they care?

      I guess there may be some ingnoramuses out there that think the best place to find information is by guessing domain names. (Good luck to them, they need all they can get.) The rest of us type the key words into Google etc. and in instants find (for example) http://heylady.net/2010/08/06/why-i-hate-amazon-and-will-never-ever-ever-buy-from-them-again/

      Except for one thing, the internet could easily dispense with names and go back to numeric addresses. That one thing is the extra level of indirection, the advantages of which I don't need to explain to technical readers. Heck, if domain names were just a dressed-up integer incremented by seven for each new one, domain-mistype-squatting would become impossible as a pleasant side-effect. Tinyurl.com proves (by existing) that many people actually prefer to use short if meaningless names.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Re: But why bother? Why should they care?

        "Tinyurl.com proves (by existing) that many people actually prefer to use short if meaningless names."

        NO! - On both counts!

        Tobacco companies prove (by existing) that many people prefer to smoke and not be a namby pamby girl and waft away a smoke cloud!

        Just NO!

  6. Lloyd
    Thumb Up

    ICANN turned down money?????

    Good Lord whatever next? Amazon paying tax? Had they got the domain they would obviously have written the ICANN fee off against tax.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Corporate Land Grab anyone?

    "The word Amazon means more than cheap online deals to the people of South America"

    No sh*t! That's a pretty cheeky move considering they're only in Brazil and only Portuguese speaking unlike the rest of the region! Its also cheeky because its near impossible to order off Amazon Brazil or USA etc, and get anything shipped to S America at all! When you get to the checkout stage you find there's loads of delivery restrictions. When you query it Amazon just directs you to their 'trusted partners'...

    I used the US and UK sites when living there. Overall its an efficient service. But only in the territories where it directly operates. So I'm gad to see them get their hands slapped on this round of corporate land grabbing!

    1. Daniel B.

      Re: Corporate Land Grab anyone?

      Unfortunately, we have our own governments to blame on this. Stupid import restrictions are the ones that impose said restrictions against Amazon, not the other way round.

      I used to be able to buy US games via Amazon (thus avoiding the horrible Spaniard-dubbed abominations they sell here) but the Mexican Government made it so that all packages with said games were blocked at the border, or have to pay a stupid amount of taxes. Thus Amazon called it quits and no longer sells US games outside the US.

      If it wasn't for Steam and other game distributors that do allow me to buy the English versions of games online, I would've given up on PC/Mac games at all by now!

  8. PyLETS

    No obligation to resolve

    Given the security issues to do with a TLD namespace for sale to the highest bidder unlikely to result in massive legal expenditure, operators of DNS resolvers, and suppliers of default configurations to such may sensibly choose to decide that resolving any TLD labels of more than 3 letters isn't worth it.

    1. the spectacularly refined chap

      Re: No obligation to resolve

      may sensibly choose to decide that resolving any TLD labels of more than 3 letters isn't worth it.

      That would cause a problem with .arpa addresses - you may not type them in the address bar too much but you'd miss them pretty quick if they didn't resolve.

      Apart from that, though, I'd say more than TWO letters. I see no real reason for gTLDs at all. Every country has its two-letter country code and I don't see a pressing need for "global" domains with all the squabbling and jurisdictional issues they inevitably create.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No obligation to resolve

        Of course there is a reason. Money is there to be conned out of the stupid!

        Plenty of folk will happily give it away. Just make them feel good.

        Piece of fruit anyone?

  9. DarkWalker

    Keep in mind that Amazon is not only the English version of the name of the river. It's also the name of the basin where the river flows, the rainforest that grows around it, and, although erroneously, is often used by English speaking persons to refer to the states where the Amazon rainforest grows in Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela (the correct name in the last cases is "Amazonas").

    Imagine a private company getting the "mississippi" gTLD; it would be similar, except that the Amazon river flows through two countries, the Amazon basin spreads across seven countries, and the Amazon rainforest spreads across nine countries.

  10. Allan George Dyer
    Coat

    Shouldn't the Greeks be complaining?

    Culturally, the Amazons are their myth, and European invaders later named the S. American river after it.

    I'll get my coat... spear and shield.

  11. PeterM42
    WTF?

    Mmmm

    So would their email address have been amazon@amazon.amazon?

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