Nations of the Amazon are seeking “shared governance” of the .amazon TLD | Hacker News Reader

Nations of the Amazon are seeking “shared governance” of the .amazon TLD

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268 pointsjonbaer280 comments

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?

Is there a .amazonia?

>>(Similarly to how Germany is .de, not .gr or something like that.)

Or how Österreich has a domain .at you mean? :P

There's already exceptions for this kind of thing all over the place. Russia has .ru despite not having a "u" anywhere in the name. Japan is .jp despite having nothing to do with Nippon.

Well Russian is typically not written in Latin script, similarly Japanese. I don't know of anyone who refers to Switzerland as the "Helvetic Confederation". If I had to compress the names of all of earth's countries (and many non-country entities) into two or three ASCII characters I don't imagine I'd have done much better.

It's worth noting that Russia does have the .рф TLD ("RF" for Russian Federation) in addition to .ru.

Considering how ubiquitous Latin keyboards are I'm OK with countries with non-Latin character sets getting a Latin equivalent as it makes those domains much more accessible to a large part of the world.

The script doesn't really matter - if you write Russia's name in Russian, but using Latin letters, it would be "Rossiya". Still no "u" there anywhere.

I think we're all on the same page here. Using the English name instead of a transliteration is a compromise with downsides. It was not such a bad compromise in the early days of the internet, and now that we have Unicode domains we can have native-style tlds and that's a good thing.

None of these are exceptions, they're all the ISO3166 codes for their respective countries.

And where did the ISO3166 country codes come from?

ISO 3166 is regularly updated to reflect changes in country names and subdivisions. These changes are done by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO3166/MA).

The maintenance agency includes representatives from the following 14 organizations:

Association française de normalisation AFNOR (France) American National Standards Institute ANSI (United States) British Standards Institution BSI (United Kingdom) Deutsches Institut für Normung DIN (Germany) Japanese Industrial Standards Committee (JISC) Spanish Association for Standardization (UNE) Standards Australia (SA) Standards Council of Canada (SCC) Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Universal Postal Union (UPU) United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)

https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html

Edit: tialaramex wrote a better explanation here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19625425

By exceptions I mean exceptions from the perceived standard of taking the country's name in its official language and shortening it. As observed, there are both domains which are shortened versions of the name in the official language(.de) and ones which have absolutely nothing to do with it(.at).

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria Austria is a very bad example, it is actually the latinized name and is widely used

Russia it self (the country ) doesn’t but Russian (the language) does. So one could argue...

> (Similarly to how Germany is .de, not .gr or something like that.)

But Hungary is .hu (not .ma or .mo for Magyarország), Finland is .fi (not .su for Suomi).

Czech Republic is .cz, not .če or .ce or even .cr

Croatia is .hr

Croatia was late to the game, only getting its code when Yugoslavia broke up. By then .cr was already taken (Costa Rica). So were .ca, .co, and .ci - Canada, Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire. .ct was available though.

not necessarily, local name is Hrvatska so it's questionable if they would have assigned `.cr` had it been available. Most users of `.hr` sites are locals so it makes sense to them but have seen confusion on websites that target foreigners.

But the ISO 3166 code for Hungary is HU, the ISO3166 code for Finland is FI and the ISO3166 code for Czechia is CZ.

The ISO3166 code for Germany is DE.

e: is there something controversial about this?

Preaumably youre being downvoted because of

OP: Why are things this way?

You: Because that's the way things are.

The point is that these country codes predate the existence of TLDs by over a decade.

ISO codes are this way because either the countries wanted the specific codes or didn't provide input.

Almost all ccTLDs match their 2-letter ISO3166 codes.

Right but that doesn't answer the underlying question of why countries wanted codes based upon their English or local names.

Nobody was even thinking about TLDs when these were being decided.

I would imagine that only a few, if any, countries really cared very much about this at the time.

Nothing controversial at all. Just a bunch of folks speculating about it with a lack of information. There's an RFC about this and a nice wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain

If I remember correctly the soviet union had SU at one point so that might have something to do with why finland is fl.

That says why it isn't .su, not why it is .fi. They could have come up with some other two letter code based on their name in their native tongue, just like all the US states beginning with "Mi" that aren't Michigan.

Well technically Swedish is also a native tongue (and official language) of Finland, so .fi is a two letter code based on a native tongue.

And Sweden isn't .sw (English "Sweden") or .sv (Swedish "Sverige") but .se. I'm assuming .sw isn't used because of possible confusion with Switzerland.

> If I remember correctly the soviet union had SU at one point so that might have something to do with why finland is fl.

.su still exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su

Also, oddly, a Finnish person proposed .su for the Soviet Union:

> The .su domain was proposed by the then-19-year-old Finnish student Petri Ojala.

Nothing odd about that, these country codes were set more than a decade before .su was introduced. Finland had already been FI since 1974.

I wonder how much of this is about avoiding collisions. .su would have been Soviet Union at the time. There are a lot of countries that begin with M, so I can see trying to avoid an M code for Hungary. There seems to be some precedent for steering countries away from common letters, if you read the tea leaves in the table (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2): there are lots of C countries, so Croatia ends up with .hr (from Hrvatska) and Chad ends up with .td (from Tchad), and the S countries are just a mess.

and .gr is Greece, not Hellas.

> (Similarly to how Germany is .de, not .gr or something like that.)

The country-specific TLDs are all ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, if I recall correctly. Germany's code in that spec is "DE", so that is what they were allotted.

Right, but the point is that ISO 3166 isn't super consistent. Germany is .DE because of Deutschland, but Russia is .RU, not .PO for Россия.

But Cyrillic P is Latin R. Maybe .ro for Rossiya, but then what do you do with Romania?

Ironically, Romania could have gotten .ru, since it was historically called Rumania in English until around 1970s (and is still called that in many other languages).

ISOs members are the standards organisations of countries. Nothing else can join except standards organisations representing a whole country, typically a UN member state although the exact margins are a bit tricky (e.g. China and Hong Kong are both in ISO...)

So, in most cases an ISO 3166 code goes to an ISO member, they would propose what they think is the best option, and if nobody else objects they get what they asked for.

Where the country code is for some entity that isn't an independent nation state (e.g. VG and VI are for the two sets of Virgin Islands, one set belongs to the United States, the other to Britain) or for an entity that doesn't enjoy full participating membership in ISO (often very poor countries or those which don't have much diplomacy anyway so who cares what the outside world thinks) then it could be decided by somebody else, if they don't like that too bad stage a war of independence.

In some cases there's contention. For example the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would like UK (and it has the ccTLD .uk) but Ukraine thinks it makes more sense for them to have it. So, neither gets it, Ukraine is UA and the United Kingdom is GB.

Presumably Germans thought DE was a better choice because it matches what they call themselves, whereas many other countries figured it makes sense to use their English name to choose the code, or they simply didn't care.

ISO 3166 is the standard though, I'm not sure why the consistency of the standard matters as you will need to consistently refer to the standard in order to reliably determine any country's 2 letter code.

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

One could also say it's a designation for a globally known, huge geographic area.

a river isn't going to make its own websites though, so there's no need for such a TLD

.pizza doesn't make websites either.

> 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.

And the globally known tourism business is named after a globally known tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology.

They can have priority when they show up, then.

I didn't realize Greece the country stopped existing.

That highly depends on what you mean by "Greece the country". When the Greek mythologies about the Amazons were written, there was no "Greece the country". Greece didn't become a country until thousands of years later. Hell it didn't even stop being part of the Roman Empire until the 1400s.

We could have a long debate about whether the modern country of Greece has any relationship to the ancient Greek city-states, but I think that's entirely beside the point.

Of course it is beside the point. I was being pedantic to the pedantic "they can have priority when they show up", where I presumed "they" was the goddesses.

You've misunderstood me. I was poking fun at Ryanlol's comment.

Here's some actual pedantry: the Amazons weren't goddesses. They were a tribe of human warriors.

If Wonder Woman is just human how was she born with superhuman powers? Those things are mutually exclusive.

> All Themyscirian Amazons possess various degrees of superhuman strength, speed, stamina and extraordinarily acute senses and the ability to glide on aircurrents. ... Themyscirian Amazons also possess immortality that allows them to live indefinitely in a youthful form.... Themyscirian Amazons also possess the ability to relieve their bodies of physical injury and toxins by becoming one with the Earth's soil and then reforming their bodies whole again.

When was "The Amazon" a country? We're talking at best about "an identity"--I say "at best" because the Greeks have consistently had a Greek identity regardless of their political configuration at any point in history, while I'm not sure "The Amazon Nations" is an identity at all, much less a deeply-held or particularly old identity.

None of the polities in the area now called “Greece” from the time in question still exist, and the one called “Greece” in English was formed much later.

The mythical Amazons never existed, and even in myth they didn't live in Greece.

I bought a bag of King Arthur-brand flour the other day. Should Great Britain be allowed to take over their domain name?

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.

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.

> But Amazon the company has not overtaken all the above.

That might be true, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion. I think it's entirely possible that depending on how you measure it, Amazon the company has overtaken all the above.

Edit: And to be slightly less waffling, I think it's entirely possible it's overtaken them in some of the most obvious ways to measure, such as (global) public consciousness and word association.

I wonder how things will look in 50 years? Amazon (the company) may look unstoppable at the moment, but huge companies do come and go; in a generation or two, perhaps they'll still be dominating the scene, or perhaps they'll be a forgotten also-ran.

I'm pretty sure the Amazon (river/basin) will still be there, and will still be one of the earth's great geographical features; I hope even the Amazon rainforest will still be noteworthy on a world scale.

In 50 years, the Amazon river/basin could have been geographically swallowed by a new political entity and renamed. Sure, that's much less likely than Amazon the company being defunct (I hope, that seems more likely to be harbinger of world disrupting changes), but I think it's also more likely than Greek mythological scholors deciding to change millennia old characters and concepts.

I'm sure we can choose a specific metric to make the Amazon geographic area win, just as we can for any of the others in this comparison, but picking the metric to match the outcome we want doesn't seem the right way to go either.

I can definitely see cases for all of them, and I don't know the right metric by which to judge. That does make this an interesting case IMO, as the likelihood of the losers to be upset is high (except maybe Greek mythology, since I don't think they have a strong lobby on their side).

It should not be without great consternation that a corporation should overtake a people.

But that's not happening. There isn't "a people" who want .amazon, there's an intergovernmental organization that supposedly wants to use the TLD for tourism purposes.

> an intergovernmental organization

So, multiple peoples?

Just as Amazon the company has multiple shareholders I suppose

So what? It is still a corporation and its interests are irrelevant compared to the one of a people, let alone multiple.

Why exactly is Amazon.com less relevant than the Amazon tourist industry? They don't want .amazon for "the people", they want it for the tourism industry which also consists of faceless corporations.

What Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela are going to do with the domain they have a right to is their business.

Why should they have any more of a right to the domain than Amazon the company? I don't think any of those countries use the word.

Obviously they do use that word, else they would not care about the domain.

Mr. Bezos could have made up his own word rather than trying to steal one.

Hasn't it?

Would be an interesting poll, broken down by region, but speaking for myself if you say 'Amazon' to me without context, I'll immediately think of the company.

Similarly 'twitter' in older literature throws me off for a second. I'd bet it's plummetted in usage in recent years.

It's just about familiarity - I use some part of Amazon the company almost every day, but have no ties to _the_ Amazon, nor see it as frequently in news items.

How about if you think of it in terms of the bond that such branding rests on. Surely, if my tribe, home, and history is tied to the name Amazon, then that beats (for some definition of "beats") one's relationship with an online retail place?

I am not arguing for any side, but I do acknowledge that the Amazonian community's right to the name rests on a very good argument.

>Surely, if my tribe, home, and history is tied to the name Amazon, then that beats (for some definition of "beats") one's relationship with an online retail place?

Which goes back to crazygringo's point:

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

Oh, I absolutely don't mean to comment on who 'deserves' (for some definition that includes 'is allowed to pay for the privilege of') it - that's a judgement I'm glad not to have to make - I was responding purely to the point about 'brand' strength.

Noted. We are in agreement.

> I am not arguing for any side, but I do acknowledge that the Amazonian community's right to the name rests on a very good argument.

I'm also not arguing for any side, but I don't think your "bond" argument is particularly convincing. Namely, it strikes me as too vague in the general case and thus too hard to adjucate. The things you use to nail it down (tribe, home, history) are specific to this case, but don't generalize well. Even if you were able to address those problems, it doesn't compell me to think that these people deserve the English name for the geography in question (perhaps especially if those people don't really identify with the geography in question, but rather as nations who happen to live in that geography?).

In any case, it's a puzzling and interesting question.

Indeed, the language bend adds an interesting dimension to the problem.

and the word apple?

The fruit.

Again, it's familiarity, and that's just me personally. I do like apples, but other than using a Mac for work I don't have any Apple gear. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that someone else first pictured iPhones etc.

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.

I believe Amazon's brand origin can be traced back to a stupid bit of wordplay like... "Books are made from paper, paper comes from trees, we want to sell all the books so we're naming ourselves after all the trees - hence, The Amazon"

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".

Its original backend was called Obidos, which is part of the Amazon River, FWIW.

Greek myths aren't directly a source of significant monetary value, the Amazon rainforest is. Also, the rainforest was named so because the Portugese conquerors were surprised as fuck to find women fighting them alongside the men in certain tribes, so the name is meant to honor them in the first place, not ancient Greek culture.

Ancient Greece no longer exists.

I had a similar discussion with someone after a small spat broke out over authenticity and the dreaded cultural appropriation of ... food.

Things we associate with a place, or people, a culture, or a nation can at times be surprisingly recent or not quite as we might assume or have origins we might not expect. Food in particular that gets associated with one group of people often has origins in far off places that you might not expect. Key aspects of those might have only recently been used and their origins might be the other side of the world. So what is authentic and who really "owns" that thing when everyone is combining and experimenting?

I think of blue jeans or even just denim as an American thing but... http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/karlins/master-of-b...

Crucial difference here: the business chose to use the name of the extant location. The name of the region derives from that of the river, which was named by an external group, without input from the local populous (unless you count attacking a Spanish expedition as "input").

Does Greece even want it?

But Barcelona refers to a specific city; a legal entity. They want the English word Amazon to refer to a group of regions, which are not one entity, who border the Amazon river (Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil). And they call that river either Amazonas or Amazona.

Furthermore, regions like this that have an official tld get a two letter tld like .eu for European Union. If they wanted to start an Amazonian Union and get a tld for it, they should! (maybe ".aa")

A legal entity is just a group that certain other people recognize. The OP is about the creation of such a legal entity.

Wouldn’t it be more comparable to Muenchen wanting “.munich” instead of “.munchen”, or Roma/Rome, etc?

Your comparison is more apt than the GP's, but I don't think political municipalities are apt analogs (or at least they don't capture all of the nuance at play here). What we have is heterogeneous people groups (not a single identity) who live in a particular non-political geographic region wanting another culture's name for that region. I guess it would be as though the people of the Alps decided that they should own the .alpine TLD, but that doesn't completely capture the multilingual concern you were discussing...

Things can get hairy for example places like the Sea of Japan vs East Sea. or rather 日本海 vs (조선)동해.

The German name for the Baltic Sea already literally translates to East Sea, so that name would only cause confusion internationally.

I'd want .munich just to avoid confusion around .muenchen vs .münchen...

Maybe .bavaria vs .bayern would have been a better illustration.

Should the people who use an .IO domain name anticipate any input about how they do business from former residents of the Chagos Archipelago, or alternatively the British military?

I'm pretty sure that national governments do have some level of control over national TLDs. Some of them don't allow privately-owned sites under their TLDs at all.

The British Indian Oceans territory was never a country, and never had any citizens. There was no indigenous people. None of the former or current residents (hired workers) ever owned any of the land.

> named after the afore mentioned globally known tourism business.

No, it was named after the Amazon river, not anything to do with tourism around the Amazon river.

Bezos didn't need to name his company "Amazon".

See also: Bethesda.

Having read most of the responses it's plain to me naming conventions should be left to computer scientists.

Japan has .jp, despite Japanese people identifying their country as Nihon/Nippon. For that matter, you could say that .jp should be .日本 instead.

But the internet is, to a large extent, English-centric, and so that's how things get named.

I'm sure you can find many more examples if you look.

Amazonas is a state in Brazil (which does, admittedly, contain most of the Amazon forest - but is not the forest itself) and the Portuguese name of the river. The forest is called "Amazônia" in Portuguese.

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

You're equating an industry with a singular corporate entity.

Amazon has offered them subdomains based on their country code, so .br.amazon for example. But they want to share access on the root domain, but that's not really how domain name systems were designed. They are designed to be hierarchical, so it makes sense for Amazon to grant full control of a subdomain to them rather than share.

Sharing would be a security nightmare also. Imagine any cookies set for .amazon ? How would the browser share between amazon subdomains vs non if they shared the root?

top level tlds could not set a cookie, but everything else applies.

Domain name systems are designed to be hierarchical, so it makes sense for Amazon to register within this hierarchy, which they already have, i.e., amazon.com.

The nations of the Amazon basin have a more complex situation regarding fitting within the hierarchy. Perhaps amazon.int?

Why would a cookie be set for .amazon? I've never known a website to set a cookie for .com, for example. That would be silly.

>Because if it were for locals, it would be .amazonia and .amazonas

this assumes many, many things.

It assumes that locals do not communicate enough in English with anyone outside their locality that they can identify with the name Amazon.

It assumes that the local region does not have any interests other than tourism and commercial purposes about how their region is perceived external to the region.

If for example there was a .germany tld would you expect that the people of Germany might want to control it for something other than just tourism and commerce? I suppose they would want to control it even if there was a company called Germany somewhere in the world and Germany is stereotypically not so much into any language but German!

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).

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

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.

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

People who run corporations either don't get or don't care that predicating relationships on deception makes people not like them.

You laugh, but people sign up to Techstars for just that every year. Pity they didn't throw in some AWS Credits as well.

We're talking about indigenous nations. What the hell are they going to do with AWS hosting?

If they're fighting over the '.amazon' TLD then presumably they'll need some form of hosting no?

I still agree it's a stupid offer from amazon though.

We're not, actually. The "nations of the amazon" referred to in the article are "Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela - all members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization"

In this case, I could see AWS hosting being useful to them (maybe even something along the lines of GovCloud like AWS runs for the US Government)

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.

> and I wished Amazon had .amazon (but made it available for others to use it too)

If only there was a way as a society we could make sure common resources could be used by interested and relevant parties in an agreeable manner. Maybe some kind of group that is formed based on the input of many people and will represent their interests in this matter and others like it. If only.

Also it's really silly for one private company to own an entire TLD just because that company choose to use a generic, commonly used word. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Amazon is a generic commonly used word? What are some generic examples of things commonly referred to as amazon?

Er, the Amazon River? I hope you were being facetious.

People generally refer to that as the Amazon River.

Does anyone really say "I'm going to Amazon"?

...are you actually saying that because "amazon" is not used as a proper noun that disqualifies it as a common, generic word and only instances of trademark use are valid?

Because that's what your example heavily implies, based on the grammar and syntax (given your capitalization of the word amazon) of your example. I hope you're not doing that. Because that'd be ridiculous.

Amazon in most contexts refers to the company and not the river or the rainforest.

When speaking of the river people are far more likely to use "Amazonas" than "Amazon".

>Amazon in most contexts refers to the company and not the river or the rainforest.

You obviously think that based on your example as completely ridiculous as it is, and arguably this is very false and only works in the context of the U.S. market, but it's actually completely irrelevant. Amazon, a U.S. based private company that won't be around forever (hopefully not), doesn't get to have wholesale ownership of the .TLD because it named itself after a word used to describe various geographic and cultural entities.

That very obviously, rightfully, and justifiably belongs to groups and organizations who have a vested interest on all things "amazon." Not the private, ephemeral company that named itself after these geographic, cultural "things."

Amazon owns the trademark. Trademarks only work in the context of markets governed by some set of economic laws and treaties. They do not own the word. This is an absurd conversation to be having, and yet-another-example of why brand TLD's were such a bad idea. ICANN is not in the business of trademarks and it shouldn't be. Brand TLD's are a kind of uber trademark because of how TLD's are structured. It's such a bad idea. Apple the company currently has .apple. A global fruit cultivated over millennia. But somehow Apple the tech company gets it.

See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19625915

I'm European and have only visited the US once in my life. I'm certainly not looking at this solely in the context of the US market.

Most people in Europe will associate "amazon" with the company, as will most Indians and increasingly the rest of Asia too.

People in South America usually don't refer to the rainforest or the river as "amazon".

Where are the people who think of amazon as the rainforest or the river?

>They do not own the word

Of course they don't, but they've got a very legitimate claim to own the TLD.

>Apple the company currently has .apple. A global fruit cultivated over millennia. But somehow Apple the tech company gets it.

So what? Nobody else wanted that TLD, why shouldn't Apple get it? This is a really strange thing to complain about.

Why does the Verisign get .net? A tool used globally to catch fish, birds and other animals for a millenia.

>Of course they don't, but they've got a very legitimate claim to own the TLD.

Not really. Once trademarks become "things", that trademark ceases to be effective and can rarely be enforced. TLD's are not for trademarks. This isn't complicated.

> A tool used globally to catch fish, birds and other animals for a millenia.

Because .net, like .com, is shorthand. ".net" is short hand for network. And Verisign is the organization responsible for maintaining that TLD's domain registry. It has nothing to do with branding or trademarks.

>A tool used globally to catch fish, birds and other animals for a millenia.

This should be your sign that you're just grasping at straws and you're not here to learn or make any kind of substantial argument.

>Not really. Once trademarks become "things", that trademark ceases to be effective and can rarely be enforced. TLD's are not for trademarks. This isn't complicated.

Amazon (the company) has a very (probably the most) legitimate claim to the gTLD as the word is most often used to refer to the company. I'm not really sure that there's any need to bring trademarks into this.

>This should be your sign that you're just grasping at straws and you're not here to learn or make any kind of substantial argument.

It's literally the exact argument you made. I suppose this would mean that you're also grasping at straws, maybe we should start some kind of a club?

>It's literally the exact argument you made.

No it isn't. What plane of confusion are you on?

I literally tried to describe this with shapes and you couldn't grasp it apparently.

I think you need to take a break.

Your .apple example was pretty silly, nobody else wanted that TLD. Why should Apple not get to have it if they’re the only ones who want to pay a fuckload of money for it?

Defining 'net' instead of 'network' was cheeky, sure, but it doesn't change the correctness of the argument one bit. It's still an ancient global concept. But one entity gets ownership of it. Why is .apple any worse? And for anything about .apple sites not being 'apple' enough, net is much worse.

Your rebuttal is the equivalent to pointing out a grammar mistake.

>but it doesn't change the correctness of the argument one bit.

It most definitely does. Because TLDs are designed to be at the top, because they are top level domains, used to house other domains in a general category. .net does not belong to a brand, it is a broad concept. So it correctly sits at the top. Other people are also able to freely register domains under that TLD.

That's a far cry from one private company owning a TLD with broad applications, just to continue to carry out its niche commercial purpose.

>Your rebuttal is the equivalent to pointing out a grammar mistake.

No it's correctly pointing out how categories work combined with the most basic of reading comprehension abilities. This is really really elementary stuff.

Does anyone really say "I'm going to Amazon"?

People going to cashless stores in Seattle?

"the Amazon", yes. https://www.worldwildlife.org/places/amazon

Probably not facetious. Just pedantic. The Amazon River is a specific example, not a generic one.

ge·ner·ic

characteristic of or relating to a class or group of things; not specific.

So the example of a common generic usage is a proper noun?

Yes. Yes it is.

https://www.worldwildlife.org/places/amazon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest

>"The Amazon" and "Amazonia" redirect here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/amazon

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amazon

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-jeff-bezos-chose-comp...

>Bezos thought the name of earth's largest river was perfect because he was building earth's largest bookstore

And the river being named after the Amazons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons due to a female warriors that fought the spanish invaders.

but amazon the company was named after the river's properties, not the warriors properties.

Don't be obtuse.

Yeah why do they need it for. Amazon.com is enough.. And maybe they can have amazon.amazon

I find your comment rather weird.

First, why would you get to decide whether Amazon.com is "enough", and what does enough even mean here?

Second, Amazon would never host their portal on amazon.amazon, it would be ridiculous. They would want www.amazon, which seems fine, or most probably shop.amazon, books.amazon, free.amazon, etc. all of which are completely in their prerogative.

Maybe Amazonians can get authority on .br.amazon, .forest.amazon, .region.amazon, or something but nothing on the top domain. It would be ridiculous for many reasons including security.

Maybe have amazon be administered by a 3rd party (verisign or whomever) and doll our subdomains to countries/amazon. Giving it directly to amazon seems not ideal..

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Amazon the company should logically have Amazon.com, since that's literally what that stands for.

what these parasites are really saying

Please do not use derogatory terms like this, it poisons discourse.

Not to mention it makes the sentence redundant.

> "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.

I'd be okay with ICANN favouring the people from a place in any of these cases. The idea that American Airlines could own .america or that FC Barcelona could own .barcelona is much weirder than Apple owning .apple or something like that.

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

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

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

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

Adding more TLD's is such a bad idea

anything that screws over cybersquatters gets my vote

ICANN’s UDRP already gives trademark holders huge leverage over cybersquatters, arguably too much power. Not sure we need much more in this regard. If you look at the UDRP’s case load, it’s extremely rare for trademark holders to lose a UDRP case.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-...

UDRP process is often abused to shut down criticism: https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/text/2017/d201...

The world would be better off without UDRP.

Domain name investing is not the same as cybersquatting.

How do you distinguish the two?

There are laws that define cybersquatting.

A domain based on generic words (for which you pay a premium) could be considered an investment.

Why?

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.

Correct! Even something as simple and obvious as '.api' is not a TLD.

To be fair, due to the hierarchy of domains, it does make sense for api to be a subdomain rather than TLD.

It would be a cool alternative to guarantee that example.tld owned example.tld.api though, as you could assume that any .api domain would be an API.

it does not make sense, right now apis are hidden away under the domain hierarchy but are used as first class citizens of the web.

lots of times you don't care about anything on a domain but the api

TLDs for things, not TLDs for trademarks.

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

I recently came across this!

https://www.californiarailroad.museum/

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

.coop for co-operatives has also been around for a while (2001), with domains like: https://chicken.coop/

what, exactly, is the problem with having “newblockbuster-movie.com” ? These sort of domains are usually abandoned within a couple years, anyway.

Having a limited set of gTLDs decided by ICANN etc didn’t really seem a long term solution either to me. ICANN itself doesn’t really seem like a solution for a truly global distributed network either, but that’s a whole other topic.

I’m not super excited about letting anyone who can afford to run a TLD make one either, but at least so far there appears to be relatively little mainstream appetite for using them.

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

At least the first three of those exist.

We already do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom...

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

https://icannwiki.org/.apple

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.

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.

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.

Yeah, I could see a gTLD version of http://nissan.com/

The bar is very different though. A local business is unlikely to be approved, even if their name wouldn't confuse people.

True, but let's say I start an apple reseller and want store.apple. That would be just fine on all counts; should Apple Computer have every instance of the word "Apple" reserved for them just because they're bigger? It would frankly be irresponsible for some companies not to: as consumers get used to esoteric TLDs, it could become a phishing concern.

Mostly, yes.

https://icannwiki.org/.google https://icannwiki.org/.microsoft https://icannwiki.org/.apple https://icannwiki.org/.fox https://icannwiki.org/.walmart https://icannwiki.org/.honda

All of these are examples of Brand TLDs (https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD), which can be registered as part of ICANNs New TLD program which started in 2012.

As many 'new' TLDs (such as the ones introduced in the 2000s such as .travel, .museum and .mobi), many of them are not used a lot, and many people are not familiar with them.

Actually .etc would be neat.

Google already uses .google

http://blog.google http://about.google

AOL Keyword NICK!

Yes. But note that it'll cost you about $1M per year to do this. There is no refund when you realise a week later that you have no purpose for .friendster or whatever, and you wish you still had $1M instead.

Several huge corporations bought the TLD for their long-winded name, and then it sits unused, because it's stupid. For example the TLD kerryproperties exists and is owned by the corporation Kerry Properties in Asia, but kerryprops.com is a much better name and so unsurprisingly the company's actual web site remains https://www.kerryprops.com/ and they just burn the money on the TLD for no reason.

Yeah, but it’d be a shame if someone else started using that domain wouldn’t it...

For just $1m a year you can buy some “insurance” that will stop that happening.

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

Couldn't you type https://amazon. or https://buy.amazon. ?

The latter yes, but the former would be like https://com.

Poor equivalency since com is a traditional TLD that has no inherent meaning on its own (though arguably could at least serve the VeriSign NIC page).

The "com" is from "commercial," which is maybe more distinct in contrast with other types of entities: "org" or "edu". Of course, that use has largely been diluted today, but it does have an inherent meaning.

How is it a poor equivalency? https://amazon is an attempt at just entering the tld without anything else and https://com is entering the tld without anything else. Just because https://amazon.com exists, doesn't mean "amazon" in and of itself means anything in the grand scheme of things.

And my point was that com alone would lead nowhere reasonable (aside from the Verisign NIC page), but Amazon by itself could very well lead to amazon's webpage.

Just like entering http://localhost or http://someotherlocalhostname works, http://amazon could as well (though with some caveats). No one has ever or would ever have any real reason to do that with com.

Yes, like http://ai https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19624728

Does this resolve to something? All I get is DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

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).

Pretty sure they could also put a website right at https://amazon/

pretty sure it's against the DNS rules (too lazy to check the RFC)

There are other, e.g. http://ai

http://ai./ is the canonical way to refer to this, and avoid the link directing to ai.example.com if such a host exists in the local network.

.ai is allowed to do this because .ai is a ccTLD administered by the government of Anguilla.

.amazon is a gTLD covered by different rules, they are technically able to do this but it is explicitly forbidden (contractually).

Wow, they're bragging about cryptography on that site but they're not even serving it securely.

Can anyone explain what happens when I click this?

I'm on the University of Waterloo network and I get sent to [1], rather than what I get when I add the period for: http://ai./

[1] https://uwaterloo.ca/artificial-intelligence-group/

Here's my /etc/resolv.conf (I'm running Linux, though the theory is cross-platform):

# Generated by NetworkManager

search my-university.edu

nameserver their-dns-server-ip

nameserver their-other-dns-server-ip

nameserver their-third-dns-server-ip

DNS queries get sent to the nameserver, but the search domain is what's important here. The search domain is used to resolve non-fully-qualified domain names. So if I just type in http://cs, that's not a FQDN since there are no .s - with cs.my-university.edu, it goes edu->my-university->cs, but just cs is not fully qualified. So since the search domain is 'my-unversity.edu', if I just type in http://cs into the browser, it will look up cs.my-university.edu.

In your case, going to the URL ai.uwaterloo.ca redirects to the URL you linked. Adding the trailing . to ai makes it fully qualified, so going to "http://ai." makes your DNS lookup just 'ai' instead of 'ai.uwaterloo.ca'.

The search domain stuff is mostly useful for addressing other devices on the network. My home router sets the search domain to 'lan' when configuring DHCP devices, so I can use my-server as a hostname and it will resolve to my home server's IP. E.g. "ssh my-server" will turn into "ssh my-server.lan" which gets resolved by the router's DNS server to the correct IP.

I expect that several people can.

* http://jdebp.uk./FGA/web-fully-qualified-domain-name.html

    % dnsqr a ai.uwaterloo.ca.
    1 ai.uwaterloo.ca:
    74 bytes, 1+2+0+0 records, response, noerror
    query: 1 ai.uwaterloo.ca
    answer: ai.uwaterloo.ca 286 CNAME wms-redir1.uwaterloo.ca
    answer: wms-redir1.uwaterloo.ca 286 A 129.97.128.216
    %
    % fetch -v -o /dev/null http://ai.uwaterloo.ca./ 2>&1|head -n 6
    looking up ai.uwaterloo.ca.
    connecting to ai.uwaterloo.ca.:80
    requesting http://ai.uwaterloo.ca./
    301 redirect to https://uwaterloo.ca/artificial-intelligence-group/
    looking up uwaterloo.ca
    connecting to uwaterloo.ca:443
    %

Would be a nightmare to type in the browser's URL bar. I guess there'd be a marked decrease in search traffic for the term "amazon".

This is against the new gTLD rules¹, not DNS rules. ccTLD operators are allowed to do this, gTLD operators are not.

If you want to know more, these are usually called apex records or dotless domains.

¹https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2013-08-30-en

You can, but iOS won't load it.

Why not? AFAIK it will load http://localhost/, is this the exception?

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).

iOS does load it, for example http://ai/ opens just fine in iOS

This only opens if http://ai./ has been loaded before. Otherwise you get ‘host not found’.

I...what?

That's really impressive, that between the choices of "yes it works" and "no it doesn't work" they managed to make a third options that's far worse.

It's doable, but iirc against the terms of the new tld program.

That'll have a wide variety of problems, and ICANN may not allow it anyway.

"Amazon" is the English spelling of the original name, so it could be argued it's a made-up word too.

All words are made up

English is the de facto language of international relations, more so than any other language anyway. And English is also the working language of ICANN, IETF, and any other technical body dealing with the Internet I can think of.

Point is, the fact that slightly different words are used in Spanish and Portuguese really doesn't matter. They might also want those words as well, but they have claim over the English version too. For example, even though the word for Japan in Japanese isn't "Japan", ICANN would never delegate that TLD to anyone else besides the Japanese government (and indeed even that TLD would be unlikely to be created because it's redundant with the .jp ccTLD).

I think the product category thing is most likely. They already do a form of {product_category}.amazon, except in reverse: amazon.{product_category}. See:

http://amazon.party/ (party supplies)

http://amazon.dog/ (pet food, toys, etc.)

http://amazon.bible/ (bibles)

http://amazon.fail/ (support contact page)

and my favorite: http://amazon.horse/ (directly to the product page for a horse mask)

How about? https://shop.amazon

Or as a platform? https://shopify.amazon

Or even more confusingly! https://walmart.amazon

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

I don't get why Amazon would get control of the entire TLD. Can't these new TLDs be managed by some other entity which hands out domains to those that want them?

Amazon got it under ICANN's New gTLD program. There have been over 1200 TLDs allocated: https://icannwiki.org/New_gTLD_Program

This is How, not Why

The "Why" is because Amazon decided to keep the gTLD for itself, rather than act as a registrar.

The document linked by grandparent also goes into the historical background of how this process came to pass.

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.

How is that different than giving them Amazon.com?

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

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.

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.

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?

> 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.

Then why stop at one? Let's have three or four. They can get "amazon.retail.com.us", while the river can get "amazon.river.geo.america", etc.

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...

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

>I'm asking why should they be treated differently, just because they're at different levels.

Well, you didn't ask that. But objectively that's what happens in taxonomies. Taxonomies are inherently, principally based on human experience and understanding. In your case what you're asking to do is just use the word "square" to refer to the set of all different shapes just because square might be the most used word when attempting to describe a shape. And that doesn't make sense. At least I hope you can agree with that.

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

Commercial is a TLD because it's broad. TLD's, by their nature, are designed to be at the very top of the domain taxonomy. Hence the name "Top Level Domain." It's at the top. So when you say Amazon, a private company that won't be around forever, should get the amazon TLD you are creating a very weird situation where Amazon the company has cemented itself not as a company but just a thing that can be used to encapsulate other "things." Even despite the fact that Amazon the company named itself after the Amazon River which was named that way because of the amazon warriors.

That's a lot of amazon. Maybe, just maybe, amazon the private company shouldn't get to own that category? Since principally there is nothing to further classify the amazon TLD as belonging to amazon the company, and not say the amazon river. That's what .com is for.

Trademark law in general already deals with the fact that words can become generic. And when that happens that trademark ceases to be effective. This should be a sign that any kind of brand TLD is completely nonsensical, because private company brands do not belong in TLDs, because TLDs are meant to house other names/concepts that have more concrete usages. Not specific companies that use their name from other concepts or higher level concepts.

TLDs are for things, categories, high level groups. Not for trademarks.

I already got your argument on why Amazon shouldn't get the "amazon." domain, what I still don't get is how those arguments don't also apply to "amazon.com."

> So when you say Amazon, a private company that won't be around forever, should get the amazon TLD you are creating a very weird situation where Amazon the company has cemented itself not as a company but just a thing that can be used to encapsulate other "things."

Right. And when one says Amazon should get the amazon.com SLD, we are creating a very weird situation where "Amazon.com Inc. P.O. Box 8102. Reno, NV 89507" has cemented itself as the only entity who can encapsulate all commercial activity in the world under the term "Amazon".

> Even despite the fact that Amazon the company named itself after the Amazon River which was named that way because of the amazon warriors.

Exactly. And the river has had plenty of commercial activity long before "Amazon.com Inc. P.O. Box 8102. Reno, NV 89507" came around. Why is it OK for that to be subsumed by "amazon.com." anymore than the rest can be subsumed by "amazon." ?

> Maybe, just maybe, amazon the private company shouldn't get to own that category? Since principally there is nothing to further classify the amazon TLD as belonging to amazon the company, and not say the amazon river. That's what .com is for.

But there's no "amazon the company". There are many, many companies called Amazon, or using the Amazon brand. If it's ok for a single specific instance of "amazon companies" to get "amazon.com", why is it not ok for a single specific instance of "amazon" to get "amazon." ?

> TLDs are for things, categories, high level groups. Not for trademarks.

Why should only TLDs be for that? Why shouldn't second-level (or even third!) domains be for that too? "Amazon.com Inc. P.O. Box 8102. Reno, NV 89507" could get "amazon.retail.com.us", for example. That would be more in line with how trademarks actually work.

>And when one says Amazon should get the amazon.com SLD, we are creating a very weird situation where "Amazon.com Inc. P.O. Box 8102. Reno, NV 89507" has cemented itself as the only entity who can encapsulate all commercial activity in the world under the term "Amazon".

Well that's how the domain structure is currently laid out. Someone has to get it. If you're just going to argue that the domain system needs more finesse, just say that. But asking these round about questions is pointless. At some point "amazon" the company gets a domain. right now that's the SLD, as it is for everyone else. ICANN has an appeal system if you think you deserve it more for whatever reason.

>Why is it OK for that to be subsumed by "amazon.com."

Because amazon purchased the domain. The domain points to a specific server. It's not a TLD that acts a registry for other domains. There is a very important difference there. One you don't seem to appreciate.

>If it's ok for a single specific instance of "amazon companies" to get "amazon.com", why is it not ok for a single specific instance of "amazon" to get "amazon." ?

I'm going to stop right here, because you're just arguing that the current domain system is broken. And that's not what we're discussing. I'm not sure what the motivation is for doing that is, but it doesn't belong here.

>Why should only TLDs be for that?

Because that's how categories and taxonomies work. I gave you an example with shapes. Hopefully you understand shapes.

>Because amazon purchased the domain. The domain points to a specific server. It's not a TLD that acts a registry for other domains. There is a very important difference there. One you don't seem to appreciate.

There's essentially no technical difference between a TLD and a domain name. Any practical difference is extremely questionable too.

>There's essentially no technical difference between a TLD and a domain name.

Yes there is. You just need to stop talking about this subject because you are very much wrong.

TLDs have authoritative organizations that adhere to ICANN regulations and act as a gatekeeper to a varied and diverse set of domains under that TLD. Certain TLDs have specific purposes. Some are country codes, others are specific scopes, some others are built in from decades past.

If I am so wrong would you mind describing any of the significant technical difference between TLDs and and domain names? I would seriously appreciate it if you could share your expertise on this topic.

None of the TLD nameserver configs I’ve encountered have seemed very special, in fact they’re exactly like the nameservers for normal domains.

Firstly, the current domain name system has included brand TLDs like https://home.barclays/ for years. So you're the one saying it's broken, if you think those TLDs shouldn't exist. Arguments like "that's how the domain structure is currently laid out" work for Amazon getting a TLD, not against it.

So we're not discussing how it works. We're discussing how you think it should work. And my request has been the same since the beginning: explain how the domains of level 1 are different from levels 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.

Your argument around taxonomies absolutely doesn't explain this. Taxonomies may be - and usually are - many levels deep.

>for years.

That's kind of an overstatement. This argument has been brought up multiple times. And no one can counter it except to say "but money." And it hasn't really been included for years. It's been discussed for years.

>So we're not discussing how it works.

I mean very much, based on the historical record in front of you, unless an HN has edited the posts, we very much are. You are concretely wrong.

> We're discussing how you think it should work.

No that IS how it works. Brand TLD's are a very new concept. With very limited surface area coverage, and very little actual use.

I understand that some of you need to see how things fuck up before understanding how things could fuck up, but I think I spelled it out very clearly. Again I even used shapes. If you're going to argue about the semantics of shapes, I think you should adjust your opinions on this subject. Because it is tightly 1-1.

>Your argument around taxonomies absolutely doesn't explain this.

I explicitly referenced the domain specification and what their purpose is. I explained how taxonomies generally work. I explained how the domain taxonomy is laid out and its intended purpose. The fact that ICANN went for a quick money grab doesn't negate this. I understand that the HN technopoly cult thinks this justifies everything. But it doesn't. At least not logically or rationally or justifiably.

You're just trying to turn this into a metargument. Please respond with something concrete. For the love of god redeem this forum.

I understood the "semantics of shapes". What I struggled to understand, again, is how that doesn't apply to other domains as well. And I know I'm not a very bright person, but it shouldn't be something hard to explain succinctly.

From what I understand now, you argument is based on historical precedent: TLDs are different because they were treated differently (as general taxonomies, whereas domains of other levels were not) before the ICANN money-grab.

Fair enough. I don't find it convincing, but then again conservative arguments rarely appeal to me.

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?

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

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.

Yes. The following is a valid url:

ai./

Amazon the company does, obviously. The only actual fight will be how much Amazon ends up paying to the nations of the amazon to use the name. (i suspect it will be zero)

I suspect it will be zero as well. I think that is the correct outcome.

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.

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.)

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

Amazon the brand named themselves after the river - their original logo was a depiction of a river. It was well established as a location by the 1990s.

I'm talking about the TLD rather than the name. dotAmazon is known to represent the company Amazon

No, it's not. I haven't seen a single .amazon domain in use yet, and they only got the greenlight to move ahead in October.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20181025_icann_gives_the_green...

So if you saw an ad with nothing else but "visit now at https://goto.amazon" you might potentially think "that's probably a place get info on the river and/or the rainforest"? I have my doubts, but each to their own

I'd think "what a shitty ad with zero context".

"Go to" implies going to a physical place, so for this specific example I actually disagree and would assume that it would belong to some Amazonian tourist board. But for most other examples I'd probably assume Amazon the company.

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.

Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization

(Not agreeing that it's a great TLD)

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.

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

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.

>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.

"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.

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

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.

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.

Amazon the company has .com

That's enough

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.

Why not Greece? The name is from their mythology.

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".]

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).

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