Amazon may still get .amazon despite govt opposition – thanks to a classic ICANN cockup Amazon may still get hold of its namesake top-level domain .amazon after an independent review panel lambasted the decision by DNS overseer ICANN to deny its application. The panel found – for a third time – that ICANN's board had failed to do its job and had broken its own bylaws by accepting a recommendation from its …
I was going to say that the Amazon is a geographical location, letting a company own it because they are rich is terrible precedent to make,
BUT
barbara.hudson made a fantastic point about the advertising and the ability to block spam. Not that any company would keep to that law for more than 30 seconds, but we can dream
Ok you try and find something[1] that hasn't got some piece of geography somewhere on the planet sharing the name...
[1] Ok, something that's an actual word and not some strategy boutique generated[2] brand name.
[2] Same effect as pulling letters at random from a scrabble bag, only much more expensive.
Create the amazon domain and put into a third party's hands to administer. Now the stuff flogger can have shop.amazon, Brazil can have br.amazon etc etc as subdomains.
Everyone happy - hooray.
Err not sure who gets www.amazon m.amazon or the inevitable amazon. A record. The last one will probably play merry hell with modern browser autocomplete/search things.
Does anyone care? Does anyone really pay attention to the domain that is shown from search engine results? (I'm talking the general public here though.) The only one I thought had legs was .bank to be run by a registrar that would only register them to known financial institutions (though the Nationwide's on both sides of the Atlantic might have had to scrap it out in the car park). The rest, just a money grab for ICANN.
I think company names could work. Actually could work for ICANN too. Amazon spend a lot of money on advertsing, as do people like Google, Apple, Coke, Microsoft etc. If they push their new domain name in all their ads, then people are going to eventually learn it. Then they might become aware that there are more internet addresses than just .com.
After all, I've seen a lot of money spent on marketing the new .word domains. But none of it at the public, it's all from domain hosting companies, trying to get us to register a bucketload of really expensive and crap names. No bugger has bothered to try to educate the public, so there's no demand, so business has mostly ignored the who charade. I guess ICANN made their bonuses, so it's not a total loss...
Then again as shop.amazon is a long to type as amazon.com, why bother?
I find it hard to sympathise with Amazon- well full stop really. Personally, I'd rather not see a .amazon, or .google, or anything like that. But then that comes to the real question... What is the purpose of a gTLD? Or, what is the point?
There seems to be no reason why we can't have .james or .edward... Why does Amazon get all the fun and exclusivity? In my opinion, the fact there is already a location called the Amazon Rainforest should be the one reason there *shouldn't* be a .amazon domain. It might make little impact now, but we have no idea what the future might look like. Although it would be rather humourous for locals of the rainforest to make the argument they were there long before the company!
But it all comes down to the point having a restriction on the number of gTLDs is pointless once you start going down that route. It made sense having them tied to locations, or to a lesser extent broad categories like ".bank", ".coop" etc. But the further they go, the more arbitrary decisions are made which are inherently unfair. Why should The Amazon lose the rights to their own gTLD- seeing as the much smaller Wales gets one? Why should any locality lose those rights, for that matter? It was much easier when it was just countries to worry about.
Besides that, allowing anyone to register their own TLD would stop this madness of buying domains for the sake of protecting ip... There would be a single landgrab for everyone's IP, arguments over specific names. I mean it probably sounds like madness and unworkable. But the system as it stands now seems like madness. This comment sounds like madness because the whole concept seems ridiculous... It reminds me of that toolbar (forgotten which now) which "added" loads of new TLDs... I think it was new.net?
Just to play Devil's Advocate here - tell me exactly where is the Country of Amazon? It's a river, not a Region. In both Brazil and Peru there are states called Amazonas, but that's not the same as Amazon and I bet that would be one hell of a fight if one of either Brazil or Peru wanted .Amazonas.
TLD's are not (yet) given on that state or county Level. Countries, yes, but not yet states. Otherwise I would be expecting to see .yorkshire popping up sometime soon.
On the otherhand I dont really see the point of more TLD's (beyond lining ICANN's pockets). So I'm all for rejecting the TLD, but NOT on the grounds of a make believe country which surrounds a river which is split between different real countries, and only theoretically might ever get used.
I agree that ICANN are rubbish but the actual decision in respect of Amazon I applaud.
Cultural imperialism - the grabbbing of a defined area of the world - should be resisted at all costs. Famous cultural names which may be geographic or historic should not become corporate playthings.
The use of categories such as . bank as outlined above or a direct equivalent has the bonus of being very monitorable. I am sure with some more thought I could make cogent cases for the proposition.!
Given the two (plus) nationwide issue, I propose that .bank be 100% required to also include the country code in any registration. That way some innocent doesn't accidentally end up at an organisation in Nigeria when they think they're going to the one just down the road.
Not that I'm suggesting she's innocent>>>>
there were plenty of other names – like .amazonia – that would be just as effective.
Until Amazon petitions to block the allocation of .amazonia because it's too close to .amazon.
That's how corporations work. Apple will sue anyone with fruit in their name or logo, even though they themselves stole the Apple trademark.
What about the other amazons?
What about the rights of well endowed ladies, do they not get a look in?
Or the Greek ladies who amputated a mammary for better archery ability?
All this carp about some shop and a forest....are we people centric or not...?
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