
Nations of the Amazon are seeking “shared governance” of the .amazon TLD - jonbaer
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47794353
======
crazygringo
It's interesting that they want .amazon specifically for tourism/commerical
purposes, because it's the English spelling, which is _not used_ locally.

Because if it were for locals, it would be .amazonia and .amazonas. (Similarly
to how Germany is .de, not .gr or something like that.)

And not that tourism means they don't deserve the name... but it's not like
this has anything to do with indigenous rights or a business trampling a
people.

It's just a globally-known tourism business vs. a globally-known shopping
business.

So not exactly something I can find myself caring about much. What do ICANN's
rules already say? Does it go to whoever first registers, or whoever pays the
most?

~~~
hjk05
> It's just a globally-known tourism business vs. a globally-known shopping
> business.

Actually it’s a globally-known shopping business named after the afore
mentioned globally known tourism business. Which I think is an important
point.

If call your software company Barcelona, then you sort of need to accept that
you aren’t on an equal footing when it comes to name ownership with the place
you named your company after no matter how big you get.

~~~
andrewla
Actually, it's a globally known tourism business named after a globally known
location and race in Greek mythology so really, Greece should get it.

~~~
8ytecoder
Brands are always in a flux. Amazon the river and the forests and the people
have a stronger brand now than the mythical Gods. But Amazon the company has
not overtaken all the above.

~~~
weberc2
I did not even know there was an Amazon people (I knew there were tribes that
lived in the Amazon rainforest, but I did not know they were "Amazon"
[Amazons? Amazonians?]). Anyway, the more salient point, I think, is that
Amazon the company is not named after the tourism business (to the best of my
knowledge) contrary to the claim upthread.

~~~
pcstl
There weren't. The Greeks had a legend about a tribe of warrior-women who
lived in the forest and were known as the "Amazons", and when the Spanish
first found what we now know as the Amazon forest the natives tried to fight
them off.

The spanish conquistadores were so impressed by the fact that the indigenous
women fought together with the men that they started calling the place the
"forest of the Amazons", after the old Greek myth. The name stuck. But there
was never an actual tribe called the "Amazons".

------
atonse
I love how they offered $5 million in amazon kindles and hosting to them. How
absolutely daft. Couldn't they just offer money? (Not that it's more likely to
work, but the kindles and hosting was ridiculous).

~~~
sametmax
It's just a way to appear generous with an offer they know they won't accept.

~~~
penagwin
And/or a way to "offer more value" without the extra cost.

Same reason you get more trade-in credit for a giftcard then cash, hosting is
"virtually" free, and kindles only cost production + shipping cost.

Not defending them, this is a useless offer, just offering another reason
they'd have.

~~~
7dare
And $5 million is nothing for Amazon, especially given they're only actually
spending a fraction of that as you mentioned.

------
henvic
When politicians and bureaucrats talk about shared governance what these
parasites are really saying is that they want royalties for Amazon being
named... Amazon.

I am a Brazilian (not that it is important) and I wished Amazon had .amazon
(but made it available for others to use it too) without state actors
influence.

~~~
stOneskull
I reckon let the amazonians have .amazon and they let amazon the company have
amazon.amazon

~~~
vntok
Amazonians can bid for .amazonia should they want to.

There is absolutely no reason why they should be given rights on .amazon, a
foreign word that doesn't exist in their own language.

~~~
larkeith
Note that Amazonia is one (of multiple) localization of Amazon - it's just as
foreign.

Note also that it is a well-established standard for TLDs to use English -
e.g. .fi instead of .su.

~~~
vntok
Counter examples abound, since as of August 2018 there were 59 approved
internationalized country code top-level domains, 47+ of them actually used
(Wikipedia)

.рф (Russia) 900000+ domains, .台灣 (Taiwan) 500000+ domains, .中国 (China)
200000+ domains, etc.

See also .tp (Timor Português), .cs (Československo), .dd (Deutsche
Demokratische Republik), .de (Deutschland), .rs (Republika Srbija), etc for
examples using the latin alphabet.

~~~
larkeith
True - it would be more accurate to say that both English and non-English TLDs
are common.

------
andjd
> "globally, hundreds (if not thousands) of brands have names similar to
> regions, land formations, mountains, towns, cities, and other geographic
> places". These could be put off applying for new gTLDs because of
> "uncertainty" over ICANN policy over geographic names.

I guess I do not see why a company, especially one that already owns
<companyName>.com, should find it necessary _or_ feel entitled to register
their brand or company name as a gTLD. In cases like this, it seems like the
gTLD should be available in a way to reflect the broader meaning of the word.

~~~
takeda
That's why allowing anyone with money create their own TLD for a quick buck
opened a can of worms.

There was nothing wrong with amazon.com and amazon.travel

~~~
ryanlol
What's the can of worms here? Why wouldn't amazon.com have _exactly_ the same
problem as .amazon?

~~~
hannasanarion
Because then everybody is going to want a TLD, which ruins the whole point of
a TLD.

~~~
ryanlol
How so? What’s the problem with selling TLDs to people willing to pay
fuckloads of money for them?

------
jdlyga
Adding more TLD's is such a bad idea

~~~
erentz
I really dislike corporate brand TLDs. But I’ve long ago wished we had
expanded the TLDs earlier to include a lot more obvious things like:

.movie, .book, .museum, .news, etc.

This would have avoided this problem where you have “book-name-book.com” and
“newblockbuster-movie.com” and so on.

~~~
progval
.museum has been around for a while (~2001), but I have never seen any use of
it.

~~~
ebcase
I recently came across this!

[https://www.californiarailroad.museum/](https://www.californiarailroad.museum/)

(no affiliation with them, but was pleasantly surprised to see it in the wild)

------
postalrat
After .amazon will be be getting .google, .microsoft, .apple, .foxnews,
.wellsfargo, .jpmorgan, .walmart, .honda, .yc, .tesla, .crocs, .beanies,
.friendster, .myspace, .etc?

~~~
nolok
Hate to break it to you, but several of those already exist

[https://icannwiki.org/.apple](https://icannwiki.org/.apple)

[https://icannwiki.org/.google](https://icannwiki.org/.google)

...

The whole point of those "anyone can buy anything tld" felt like a scheme to
force companies to buy "their" name.

~~~
Spivak
I would assume that you woudln't be forced to buy your name if you own the
trademark because within-reason nobody else would be able to buy it.

~~~
TomMarius
Doesn't that apply only if the other company is a competitor to you? E.g. a
shoemaker named Microsoft could get the domain if it was clear they're using
the name fairly.

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, I could see a gTLD version of [http://nissan.com/](http://nissan.com/)

~~~
Dylan16807
The bar is very different though. A local business is unlikely to be approved,
even if their name _wouldn 't_ confuse people.

------
cronix
I'd prefer a shorter name anyway, if I were Amazon, the company. Who wants to
type [https://amazon.amazon](https://amazon.amazon) over
[https://amazon.com](https://amazon.com)?

~~~
CydeWeys
They wouldn't use amazon.amazon obviously. Some options would include
www.amazon, store.amazon, home.amazon, {product_category}.amazon, ec2.amazon,
aws.amazon, etc.

See how we're using .google for some examples (which fortunately is a
completely made-up word, hence no contentions).

~~~
microcolonel
Pretty sure they could also put a website right at
[https://amazon/](https://amazon/)

~~~
xena
You can, but iOS won't load it.

~~~
JosephRedfern
Why not? AFAIK it will load [http://localhost/](http://localhost/), is this
the exception?

~~~
joshstrange
Yes, localhost IS the exception. There is a lot of code that treats
"localhost" specially. IIRC Chrome will let you do things on localhost:XXXX
that are normally only possible for sites over HTTPS (Think geolocating and
some other privacy-related things).

------
PhasmaFelis
Does it not seem fucked up that we're allowing corporations to make their own
exclusive TLDs in the first place?

~~~
eeZah7Ux
It absolutely is.

Trademarks can be enforced only in a specific context e.g. I can use "amazon"
as a name for my cat or a restaurant but not an online marketplace.

Giving a whole TLD to a brand name is like giving an infinitely broad context
to trademark.

~~~
icebraining
How is that different than giving them Amazon.com?

~~~
kadendogthing
Well, because the .com TLD is meant for commercial use. Amazon owns the
commercial trademark in basically every market that has such laws.

~~~
icebraining
Amazon has a commercial trademark on some specific areas of commerce. There
are many other Amazon trademarks owned by other people, even in the US alone.

~~~
kadendogthing
Sure. But you asked how it was different. Amazon has a domain name under a
commercial TLD, .com. It doesn't have it's brand as a TLD, nor should anyone.

Amazon does have a very good claim to make that in the commercial space,
people associate the word "amazon" with the company. It might not always be
that way, but right now that is a very reasonable claim.

If you think someone else should have amazon the _domain_ , no one should have
amazon, or whatever else, that's a nifty conversation to have. But it's not
what is being discussed.

~~~
icebraining
They're both domains, I'm asking why should they be treated differently, just
because they're at different levels.

The reason given was that the context was too broad, but so is the
"commercial" context across the whole world.

If Amazon should have the second level domain because it's the most well know
association of the word at the commerce level, then why shouldn't it be given
the top level domain if it has the most well known association of the word,
period?

~~~
tomjakubowski
> If Amazon should have the second level domain because it's the most well
> know association of the word at the commerce level, then why shouldn't it be
> given the top level domain if it has the most well known association of the
> word, period?

The second question is a lot wider in scope and harder to answer, for one.
It's usually beneficial to narrow scope to make problems easier to solve.

~~~
ryanlol
Easy test that might give us a hint, compare the google search results between

'"amazon.com" -site:amazon.com'

'"the amazon" OR "amazon rainforest" OR "amazon river"'

At least on google, amazon.com returns _vastly_ more stuff. Hell, even
'"Amazon" AND "Bezos"' gets way more hits than '"amazon rainforest" OR "amazon
river"'

Obviously this is far from conclusive, but it's _something_. Google trends
might also be an useful tool.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22the%20amazon%2...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22the%20amazon%22,%22amazon.com%22,amazon%20bezos,amazon%20river,amazon%20rainforest)

Seems like people search for "the amazon" about as often as they search for
amazon and bezos together, worldwide.

------
linsomniac
The proposed names (books.amazon, tourism.amazon, br.amazon) all seem to be
dancing around what I suspect is going to be a big fight: Who gets www.amazon?

~~~
CharlesW
Technical DNS question: Can "amazon" be resolved without the "www"?

~~~
notatoad
technically yes, there's nothing special about www and no actual reason that a
TLD can't be resolved directly.

However, icann policy forbids 'dotless' domains, and most browsers will
probably default to doing a web search if you enter a word that doesn't look
like a domain in the address bar.

------
depressed
The nation-prefix suggestion could actually be reasonable if Amazon.com Inc.
were also limited to its own prefix, say .inc.amazon. I assume that's not what
was proposed.

------
flavor8
Custom TLDs are specifically non regional, according to ICANN rules. (I looked
into buying my state as a TLD and then reselling domains. No go.)

------
corobo
Wouldn't it be better to petition to get .acto as their representative cctld
equivalent?

Maybe I'm just old fashioned or something but it feels more "official" to use
a shortened/acronym/initialization than to want to use .amazon, which is also
already established as the brand rather than the location

~~~
CydeWeys
What would .acto mean?

Also, ccTLDs are two letters long, not four. If it's three or more letters
long then it's always a gTLD.

~~~
corobo
Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization as t3rabytes mentioned, it's the
organization formed by the countries involved.

Correct, I meant gTLD. I couldn't think of the proper term at the time.

~~~
detaro
Turning this around: So if you saw an ad with nothing else but "visit now at
[https://goto.acto"](https://goto.acto") you might potentially think "that's
probably a place get info on the river and/or the rainforest"?

~~~
CydeWeys
Yeah, that's just not a great TLD. No one will know what it means. .amazon is
much better and it's obvious why they would want that one more.

------
kyle-rb
>Users can now end their website names with more than 1,200 new extensions,
including .blog and .you

This is a caption for a photo in the article, but .you isn't actually
available. It's currently owned by Amazon, but they don't offer it to the
general public. I'm not sure if they actually use it at all.

------
obenn
"And last year it tried to persuade the countries by promising them $5m
(£3.8m) worth of free Kindle e-readers and hosting services."

That's hilarious. Imagine if they just gave up the fight in exchange for like
100,000 Kindles and some AWS credits.

------
danschumann
Irony that the company is now probably more known than the place.

------
mises
This feels like as much an attempt to typo-squat on the existing tld. I don't
know why else they wouldn't go with the Spanish equivalent. Also, if they want
it for tourism (the other possibility), I don't see why they have any more of
a right to it than Amazon, Inc. First-come, First-served.

------
ben509
It's amazing that Amazon's people miss an easy chance to score some good will.

"Of course, we'll defer to the people who actually live in the Amazon because
their cultural identity and heritage should obviously outlast our corporate
branding."

That would be a huge PR coup for them.

------
stOneskull
Amazon the company has .com

That's enough

~~~
vntok
That is your personal opinion. To me and plenty others, there are a lot of
legitimate uses for short and dynamic domains under .amazon, including
shop.amazon, computers.amazon, books.amazon, category.amazon, videos.amazon,
etc.

In particular, I'd like to be able to teach my relatives to type in
"some_product_they_want.amazon" in their search bar and be sure they will
always land at a reputable place. Remember browsers are increasingly hiding
URLs, so ensuring the domain is legit is incredibly important.

------
travisoneill1
Why not Greece? The name is from their mythology.

------
ceejayoz
Not the domain name, the .amazon TLD.

[edit: To downvoters: the original title for this submission was "The nations
of the Amazon want the domain name back".]

~~~
Sahhaese
This seems to be an error by submitter rather than the BBC too unless the BBC
have changed their title.

(Technically you can get into pedantry and point out that a top level domain
is by definition a domain, but that's just not how people use the word and the
headline is therefore left misleading).

