The fight of 8 South American countries against Amazon by a name

The fight of 8 South American countries against Amazon by a name

Governments of the Amazon basin oppose the creation of a new Internet domain: .amazon.

   It is a name that evokes epic proportions: the largest rainforest in the world, a global technology company and now a diplomatic saga that is nearing its end.

After seven years of dispute, the Internet Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit organization, determined a deadline for the Amazon retail giant and eight governments. South American countries reach an agreement on how to use the extension '.amazon' (Amazon in Spanish).

   If an agreement is not reached before April 7, 2019, the ICANN executive board will issue a unilateral decision.


But to understand what is at stake, we must return to 2012.

That year, ICANN decided to expand its list of generic top-level domains (gTLDs). It's about the names that come after the point, like the '.com' of the web pages.


The new rules allowed companies to request completely new extensions, so that Internet users and companies had more possibilities to personalize the name and address of their websites.

However, ICANN prepared special rules for extensions that refer to geographical or geopolitical locations and ethnic, linguistic and cultural communities, which makes it easy for anyone to object to the use of those names.

Betting Amazon
Amazon, enthusiast of the new rules, requested a whopping 76 new top-level domain names, including '.app', '.free', '.cloud' and '.kindle', each costing $ 185,000 only in application fees.

Google went even further and claimed 101 new top-level domains, while a 'start-up' called Donuts, founded with the sole purpose of registering and managing new gTLDs, requested 307, suggesting that some people believe that the new The gTLD business can be very lucrative.


According to the latest statistics, until February 28, 2019, 1,232 new extensions had been approved, as varied as '.blog', '.you', '.pet' and '.fitness'.

ICANN received a total of 1,930 domain name requests under the new rules.

Among the geographical names are '.london', '.rio' and '.istanbul', but eight countries in the Amazon Basin opposed the retail giant's plans regarding the domain name '.amazon'.

Until now there have been many attempts to break the deadlock, but all are unsuccessful.

What the 8 countries want:

The governments of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Surinam and Venezuela, all members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), claim that giving ownership exclusively to Amazon could affect their sovereignty.

The diplomats told the BBC that they are not trying to deny the use of the domain by Amazon, but propose a "shared government" of the name.

According to their proposals, Amazon would be allowed to immediately use domains that are relevant to their business interests, such as 'books.amazon' or 'kindle.amazon'.


In turn, each country, in turn, would have the right to use domains related to its cultural heritage. Imagine that the Amazonian nations come together to promote the region under the domain 'tourism.amazon', for example.

And, more importantly, countries want to create a committee in which both Amazon and the eight countries have the opportunity to challenge new top-level domains in the future.

What Amazon wants


Amazon rejected these proposals and offered countries the possibility of using the .amazon extension associated with two letters that represent each country. For example, 'br.amazon' for Brazil or, in the case of ACTO, the acronym of the organization.

The company declined to comment before the deadline of April 7, but referred to previous comments from its vice president of public policy, Brian Huseman, who promised that Amazon "will not use the TLD in a confusing manner."



Amazon promised to work with governments to identify and block the use of "names that touch national sensitivities" and pledged to support a new top-level domain using local terms such as '.amazonia' and '.amazonas'.

And last year he tried to convince countries by promising free Kindle readers valued at $ 5 million and hosting services. The offer was rejected.

In a letter sent to ICANN in March, the Ecuadorian ambassador to the United States, Francisco Carrión, said: "We are not seeking financial compensation, nor are we seeking 'ex-gratia' concessions to use one or a few second-level domains. Many of us are dealing with sovereignty, and the offer to share the TLD with Amazon Inc. is compromising. "

Other disputes



The current dispute comes after similar cases that have already been resolved.

In 2013 the clothing brand Patagonia, based in the US, withdrew an application for the extension '.patagonia' after the objection of Argentina and Chile.

A company based in Mexico had to reach a financial agreement with the city of Bar, in Montenegro, to obtain the consent to register the extension '.bar'.

And in 2016, ICANN granted the '.africa' gTLD registry to a charity based in Johannesburg, South Africa, after receiving the support of 75% of the countries of the African Union.

But the case of Amazon is the most complicated of all.

Initially the Amazon application got an extension, but the Brazilian and Peruvian diplomats managed to cancel it thanks to the support of the group that represents governments within ICANN: the GAC.

That in itself required diplomatic pressure to change the position of the United States of supporting Amazon Inc. to remain neutral in the dispute.

Amazon then appealed and ICANN was forced to make a decision based on its own conclusions.

If the parties do not reach a consensus by April 7, Amazon will have two weeks to defend their position again before ICANN makes a decision.