back to article Never mind that naked selfie scandal... Brazil lights the, er, kindling, dot-Amazon saga roars back into life

A seven-year fight over the introduction of .amazon top-level domains may finally be resolved this week with crunch talks in Brazil. South American governments are furious at DNS overseer ICANN for refusing to put Amazon's application for the dot-word on permanent, hold and have insisted that ICANN's CEO come to Brasilia to …

  1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    An Indonesian island next?

    Pity Sun aren't still around, sending the ICANN board there for a meeting appeals

    1. VikiAi
      Thumb Up

      Re: An Indonesian island next?

      I vaguely recall a journalist jokingly asking Sun about this back when Java (the programming language!) was new and the CEO saying they wouldn't have any issue at all with the island using the word for anything not programming-language related.

      It was a different age.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: An Indonesian island next?

        Sun, or their lawyers, did send a cease and decist to the island about using java.

        Scott managed to spin it into a famous joke about hunting down the owners of the big bright light in the sky

  2. Paul Herber Silver badge

    If the Brazilians/Peruvians called it Amazon then they might have an argument, but their name for the river is Amazonas. A different kettle of piranas.

    Hint: Αμαζόνιος.com is available ...

    1. find users who cut cat tail

      Seriously? Even my country's TLD is based on the English name, not local -- as a bunch of them are. What does it have to do with anything?

      1. Paul Herber Silver badge

        No, I wasn't being serious! These new TLDs are a pimple on the face of the Earth.

  3. Steve Aubrey
    Meh

    Follow the money

    Seems both sides are after a big pot o' cash - one protecting their envisioned future, one wanting to share the wealth (inbound). Unsure who is righter, but ICANN doesn't appear to be doing very well.

  4. Jamie Jones Silver badge

    All a load of bollocks

    I thought bezos had just shown that he isn't afraid of his dick size, so why give a shit over a domain name? Besides, everyone knows amazon.com - this is just a willy-wagging exercise

    1. Bronek Kozicki

      Re: All a load of bollocks

      I think that this not something Bezos can "let it go". Not without firing all the lawyers in the IP department and risking the wrath of SEC. The shareholders need Amazon to be protected trademark, and the necessary component for that is registering all the relevant DNS names. The new TLDs are just a money grab from ICANN because they knew exactly that this would happen, for the reasons set above.

      1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

        Re: All a load of bollocks

        Hmmm. I hadn't thought about it that way.

        Still, how can you argue a tradename justification case against the very thing you got your name from in the first place! ?

        If anyone is "passing off' it'a amazon inc. not amazon river!

        p.s. not my downvote!

        1. Bronek Kozicki

          Re: All a load of bollocks

          The rules for trademark registration mean that they have to make every effort to protect it. But I guess they would be happier to have lost the case because that's the only situation when they can legally "let it go" and stop this PR nightmare.

          1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
            Thumb Up

            Re: All a load of bollocks

            Oh, I see! Well, IANAL, so my apologies to the well-endowed one!

            Thanks for the explanation. I always considered the new TLDs a cash-grab.. more so now!

  5. Donn Bly

    Its just another bureaucratic money grab

    In my recollection, the official language of Brazil is Portuguese, and in that language the name of the river is spelled "Amazona". I would concede ACTO *may* have considerable rights to that version of the name, but their rights are a bit shaky when they claim to have the rights to the anglicized version of the name when it is being used by a company outside of their region in a manner that does not even refer or relate to the river. Especially when the origin of the name actually comes from GREEK mythology and does not have a corresponding origination anywhere within the geographic region that ACTO was formed to represent.

    If ACTO has rights that supersede Amazon Inc., then any publisher that publishes the works of Homer, Herodotus, Strabo, or any other other ancient Greek historians translated to English from their original Greek would have rights that supersede ACTO. Where would that end?

    I am not a fan of the .{whatever} GTLD craze. It was a clear money-grab by a supposed not-for-profit organization that did not have legitimate expenses to justify raising funds in that matter. However, ICANN set up the rules and should abide by them -- or refund ALL of the monies earned in that manner (for ALL GTLDs)

  6. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    I love these new TLD's

    It makes blocking spam so much easier - I just blacklist the entire TLD at the mail server with a spam-assassin score of 50.

    1. JohnFen

      Re: I love these new TLD's

      Heh, I do this as well! The new gTLDs are also worthwhile in terms of helping me to avoid dodgy sites -- if it's using one of the new gTLDs, I know to avoid it.

  7. The Nazz

    Incongrous footnote, p.s.

    Didn't expect to see that there at the end. Interesting article though.

    Tipping : One more reason to dislike the US.

    Why would anyone tip a delivery driver/contractor for doing their basic job, as little as leaving a parcel on your porch?

    Plus, an ever growing list of people/trades/tasks that one is expected to tip. Debates about the rate of tip that escalate the minimum eg Should one tip 15, 20 or 25% at restaurants?".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: Incongrous footnote, p.s.

      Because they drive the wrong vehicles, see what happens if you happen to pilot an helicopter for Bezos... the tips are far, far higher...

      1. Paul Herber Silver badge

        Re: Incongrous footnote, p.s.

        We're just going round in circles here.

    2. PacketPusher
      Headmaster

      Re: Incongrous footnote, p.s.

      I have to say that I have never seen an Amazon driver. When I order stuff from Amazon, it just appears on the front step. Even when I am home, i never hear a know or doorbell. I doubt that amazon delivery drivers get tips.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What naked selfie scandal?

    Could we see the evidence?

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Re: What naked selfie scandal?

      All you need to know about Bezos: He frequently gets it out, usually can get it up but he never manages to reach the big O.

  9. jeanguillon
    WTF?

    Interesting but...

    ...let's imagine that the .AMAZON new gTLD sees the day (which I doubt): then what?

    What could Amazon do with ".amazon" domain names? Categorize amazon.com and flood the web with descriptive domains for each department? Seal its emails? Or just...do nothing like the majority of .BRAND applicants?

    Putting so much resources in trying to acquire the .AMAZON new gTLD could mean that there is a real project behind.

    1. hellwig

      Re: Interesting but...

      Just typical corporate paranoia. If they don't buy .amazon, someone else might, and then when someone goes to <something>.amazon instead of amazon.com, they won't get Amazon's website (as if that would happen).

      "do nothing" is exactly what ICANN was counting on when it opened up the gTLD process. Mega-corporations would buy dozens or hundreds of TLDs in desperate attempts to head-off competition, where instead everyone should have just ignored the pointless process and told ICANN to shove off.

      I wonder if this will eventually fall afoul of E.U. regulations. Imagine trying to go to <localretailer>.amazon, and being redirected to Amazon's site (again, not that anyone ever would). Seems anti-competitive. I mean, if they argue that going to google.com, searching for something, and seeing, alongside your results, similar offerings from Google is anti-competitive, imagine going to <store>.amazon, and not even seeing the results you wanted. My god, those poor E.U. businesses!

  10. Steve Knox

    No Wonder

    ...Amazon promised to give the governments millions of dollars of free Kindles...

    No wonder they couldn't come to an agreement, with a threat like that looming overhead...

    1. the Jim bloke
      Headmaster

      Re: No Wonder

      so how many times DOES "free" go into "millions of dollars"?

      Lets use a small value of millions, say 2, and the commonly understand value of free, as 0...

      2 000000 divided by 0......

      whoops,

      broke the internet,

      but the countries of the Amazon basin can rest their industrial base on providing services to the importers delivering infinite kindles..

  11. PyLETS
    Thumb Down

    License to print money

    How much more convenient for ICANN to obtain one of these under the laws of the State of California, compared to the more robust and tedious accountability and consensus requirements concerning how international telephone dialling prefix codes are decided by the ITU. Fortunately installing a new DNS root on a system is just a routine software update away. So if ICANN do anything evil enough to justify sufficient annoyance, such as issuing a bogus DNSSEC cert for a national TLD because the NSA tell them to via judicial warrant, the ICANN role in our currently coherent naming heirarchy (because everyone agrees to let them run their money printer at full speed) is at least technically disposable.

  12. PacketPusher
    Megaphone

    Greece

    I don't know why Brazil should really have any say in the matter. The river is named after a Greek myth. If anyone should have veto rights, it is the Greeks, not the Brazilians.

    1. the Jim bloke

      Re: Greece

      The Greeks had the original democracy too, but you certainly dont want them having any say in running your country (possibly including Greece)

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