South American Governments Dispute Amazon Domain Application

South American national governments have joined forces to complain about tech giant Amazon’s bid to acquire the .amazon generic Top Level Domain (gTLD).

They are worried the retailing behemoth will gain exclusive rights to the Amazon domain and prevent the use of it for “purposes of public interest related to the protection,promotion and awareness raising on issues related to the Amazon biome”.

Concerns were voiced as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened discussions with members of its Government Advisory Committee (GAC).

Amazon domain dispute

“In addition, this gTLD string requested by ‘Amazon EU S.à.r.l.’ matches part of the name, in English, of the ‘Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization’, an international organisation which coordinates initiatives in the framework of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty, signed in July 1978,” the Brazilian and Peruvian governments said in their GAC response.

Brazil and Peru said they had the full endorsement of non-GAC members Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana and Argentina in their protestations at the .amazon domain.

Amazon had not offered a response to a TechWeekEurope request for comment on the Amazon domain at the time of publication.

GAC filed 242 “early warnings” on individual applications for gTLDs. Those applications were announced back in June, when Amazon requested ownership of 76 domains. Google applied for 101 and both went for the same gTLD in a number of cases.

Members of GAC issued other warnings on Amazon bids, including those for .book, .app and others.

A number of governments also complained about gTLDs Google is hoping to secure, including .blog and .search.

The governments of UAE and India have raised serious concerns with the bid for the .islam domain. “A very important question must be raised as to how the applicant will ensure that the use of the domain name is in line with Islam principles, views and law,” the UAE said.

The United Kingdom only had one quibble over the gTLDs, saying that the .rugby domain should go to the International Rugby Board, not to either of the two other bidders.

Are you up on the languages of the Internet? Try our quiz!