Amazon domain battle rages on as internet overseer postpones decision

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Amazon domain battle rages on as internet overseer postpones decision
Reuters

URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amaz ... SKBN1QS2OI
Category: Business
Published: March 11, 2019

Description: BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil on Monday thanked the global body that oversees Internet addresses for extending until April a deadline for Amazon basin nations to reach a deal with Amazon.com Inc in their seven-year battle over the .amazon domain name.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting this week in Kobe, Japan, decided to put off a decision that was expected to favor use of the domain by the world’s largest online retailer. Amazon basin countries Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname have fought the domain request since it was made in 2012, arguing that the name refers to their geographic region and thus belongs to them.

ICANN has agreed to put off a decision until after April 21, Brazil’s foreign ministry said in a statement that insisted that Amazon nations remain “firmly opposed” to allowing the company to have exclusive use of the domain name. “In our view, due to its inseparable semantic link to Amazonia, this domain should by no means become the monopoly of one company,” the ministry said. The statement said Brazil and its seven Amazon partners will continue to negotiate in good faith with Amazon.com to try to reach a “mutually acceptable solution” to the domain dispute. Amazon.com declined to comment.

ICANN placed Amazon.com’s request on a “Will not proceed” footing in 2013, but an independent review process sought by the company faulted that decision and ICANN then told the Amazon basin nations they had to reach an agreement with the company. In October, with little progress toward any agreement, ICANN said it would take a decision at this week’s meeting in Japan, which was widely expected to favor Amazon.com.

The Amazon nations have so far not agreed to the company’s offers, which have reportedly included millions of dollars in free Kindles and hosting by Amazon web services. Amazon nations should be able to share in the management and use of the domain, to defend the region’s cultural heritage, foster economic growth and the digital inclusion of the people who live in the region, Brazil’s statement said. Brazil hopes Amazon.com will “show a high sense of public responsibility and political and cultural sensibility,” it said.

Who dis? Sensible enough for Bolsonaro?

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Retailer Amazon nears victory in rainforest battle over domain name
Reuters

URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amaz ... SKCN1SQ2FL
Category: Business
Published: May 20, 2019

Description: BRASILIA (Reuters) - Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, is close to winning a seven-year battle with eight Latin American countries over the .amazon internet domain. Amazon Inc has been seeking rights to the domain name since 2012. But Amazon basin countries Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname have argued that it refers to their geographic region and should not be the monopoly of one company. The global Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees internet addresses, said on Monday it had decided to proceed with the designation requested by Amazon Inc pending a 30-day period of public comment after the eight nations bordering the world’s largest rainforest and the company failed to reach an agreement. Brazil lamented the ICANN decision and said it should have opted for shared governance of the domain, the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement. ICANN had extended until last month a deadline for the parties to reach a deal. ICANN placed the company’s .amazon request on a “Will not proceed” footing in 2013, but an independent review process sought by the company faulted that decision and ICANN then told the Amazon basin nations they had to reach an agreement with the company.

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Supporting Dot Amazon Strengthens Global Internet Cooperation
CircleID

URL: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190307_ ... operation/
Category: Business
Published: March 7, 2019

Description: With the backlash against tech companies gaining steam, we've seen certain contrarian members of the media taking indiscriminate aim at companies and issues without due cause. This is what happened when Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett, in a paywalled March 7th editorial, inaccurately portrayed a process involving the Amazon's gTLD application for .AMAZON, an issue the i2Coalition has been engaged in for years. While we respect that columnists have limited time to write pieces and short space to make their argument, this column argues that the story of .AMAZON is one of attempted exploitation. This is not the case. The columnist praises ICANN's global consultative process and its slow and deliberative action, and yet she goes on to immediately rush to judgment about what it should do with the gTLD itself. Rather than try to understand ICANN's processes, this columnist prefers to complain that it's simply too complicated. "[M]y heart lies on the side of the jungle," she writes, going on to say that proceeding with the .AMAZON delegation would threaten Internet cooperation. Given looming deadlines to solve this protracted conflict in the right way, we wish to state that the opposite is true. Amazon applied for .AMAZON and its Chinese and Japanese translations, among many others, when ICANN launched the new gTLD program seven years ago. Under the 2012 gTLD Applicant Guidebook process, the ".AMAZON" application received perfect scores, and ICANN's Geographic Names Panel, which had been consulting with governments for multiple years on the subject, said the domain was neither a prohibited geographic name nor one which required government approval. ICANN operates under the multi-stakeholder model. The multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance serves to keep the Internet free and open, by bringing the interests of all parties to the table and ensuring that the Internet is free of undue control by any one group, including governments who have an important but not overreaching role to play. It was under this system that the .AMAZON application was made. Amazon met all the requirements under ICANN's articles, bylaws, and guidebook, and drew top marks across the board for its' application. Amazon is a member of the i2Coalition, but our interest in this matter goes well beyond the commercial interest of a single member of our community. ICANN is seven years into a gTLD delegation process in which the rules were clearly spelled out in advance, with governments at the table when the rules were made. Attempts to change them after the fact, in ways that are not driven by consensus of the global multi-stakeholder community, are corrosive to the trust we have in the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance. In short, ICANN needs to follow through with the .AMAZON application, and follow its' own rules, to maintain the credibility of its' systems. Though we should all be sympathetic to the position of the governments of Brazil and Peru, we should also be impressed with the extensive efforts that Amazon has undertaken in order to assuage as many of those concerns as possible. They have made formal signed commitments to not use the TLDs in a confusing manner. They have promised to support future gTLD applications to represent the region using the geographic terms of the regions, including .AMAZONIA, .AMAZONICA or .AMAZONAS. They also offered to reserve for the relevant governments certain domain names that could cause confusion or touch on national sensitivities. We strongly believe that the Internet community and the Board of ICANN now has an opportunity to show the entire multi-stakeholder community that its' systems work. By upholding its Applicant Guidebook, its community-developed bylaws, and independent dispute resolution process, the ICANN Board's approval of the .AMAZON applications will increase community trust, and show that the Board takes ICANN's core principles of transparency and accountability extremely seriously. For those reasons, we call on the Board of ICANN to approve the .AMAZON applications.