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Of course, if the company would have been called something like "Niagara Falls", or "Yosemite", or "Grand Canyon" and the US government protested, we know the result would have been very different. Just another example of how unjust and unequal in general the administration of domain names is.

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Right, the US Government would have paid a lot of money to buy the TLD, like they did when they signed a contract that assigned all of the trademarks for Yosemite, including "Yosemite National Park", to Aramark, and then wanted the trademark back.

Wow, I hadn't heard of this. Link for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_National_Park_tradema...

Ah, thanks for the link. Let me correct the record: Delaware North held the trademarks, Aramark was the new concessionaire that had to rename the Ahwanee Hotel, etc.

I'm not an expert on Niagara Falls, but isn't it equally Canadian?

It is. So this is probably not the best example by the parent (given that there would be yet another party trying to claim it).

But I think the point they raised is still very good.

I thought they were being sarcastic, so I'm not sure it's clear what point they raised. Also, people seem to think the US government does not act in a similar way.

I think they were suggesting that if the US objected to new TLD it would be a different process/outcome than when the South American countries objected.

Well, the process of imagining things that support your prejudices is very broadly applicable. You'd think people would just get bored and jaded with it.

I have no idea what you're going on about. Who has prejudices? Me? The grandparent poster? What specifically are you in disagreement with?

Regardless, I think you might be reading way too much into things.

If the US government wanted to protest, they’d probably do so in a far less incompetent manner.

>ACTO insisted on a face-to-face meeting and Marby duly got on a plane to Brasilia. He was in his hotel room in Brazil’s capital when he was told the meeting had been cancelled due to the political situation in Venezuela.

In the end the ACTO folks didn’t even care enough to meet with the ICANN CEO who had traveled all the way to Brasilia to meet them.

I can’t buy the Venezuela excuse, surely the ACTO gtld experts are not the same people who deal with Venezuela.

> I can’t buy the Venezuela excuse, surely the ACTO gtld experts are not the same people who deal with Venezuela.

It was the foreign minister of Brazil who canceled the meeting, citing the tensions with Venezuela as the reason for cancelation. [0]

[0] https://veja.abril.com.br/blog/radar/chanceler-cancela-reuni...

Send in an underling then.

Tensions don't change if you send the 2nd or 3rd in command instead of the foreign minister.

The problem wasn’t that the FM was busy with more important stuff, it was that Brazil didn’t want to participate in negotiations where Venezuela was a party.

But they also couldn’t be bothered to inform the other participants about this fact until it was way too late...

So uh, the problem was that they didn’t want to participate in the negotiations because Venezuela is also a party in the ACTO?

This seems to solidly prove that they never gave a shit about the gTLD.

Waiting for the ICANN CEO to fly over there before announcing this was just a fundamentally shitty move, it’s not like the tensions with Venezuela were a brand new thing. These people are clearly just assholes.

> This seems to solidly prove that they never gave a shit about the gTLD.

That doesn't make any sense. ACTO disputed .amazon's proposal as soon as it was made available, in 2012. It's been 7 years, circumstances and governments have changed. At the time there were no tensions with Venezuela, in 2019 there were tensions. How does that prove anything about the gTLD?

> How does that prove anything about the gTLD?

It’s a shitty, childish excuse for the refusal to participate in the process. Internal disputes within the ACTO were enough for them to drop the whole thing, if they cared they could’ve proceeded despite the fact that Venezuela is a member of the ACTO.

You do realize it's serious issue in the region when the world's superpower that is known with coups in the region is threatening you your neighbor with force? For people living there, including the politicians, it's not just another news. Sounds more than reasonable excuse to cancel the meeting.

Respectfully, you’re projecting your own view of the situation onto Brazil. Violent conflict isn’t an unknown thing in the region and Brazil is solidly on the anti-Maduro side.

No, I don’t see how this is at all relevant to the gTLD issue.

And yeah, what SpicyLemonZest said.

This is very much “just another news” to the people living there. You’ve got your dates all mixed up. By Feb 2019 this was not even news https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/04/trump-sugges...

Finally, the stated reason for cancellation was that the Brazilian FM did not want to sit in the same table with the Venezuelans. Not any interesting new developments regarding Venezuela.

> "Niagara Falls", or "Yosemite", or "Grand Canyon" and the US government protested

Not even close to being true. I have actually dealt with the US Government and have gotten explicit permission from them for something very similar. Official letter from the appropriate agency 'not restricted by anything feel free to use'.

> Just another example of how unjust and unequal in general the administration of domain names is.

Typical internet furor over what you read that others say who are not properly informed about a topic.

Nothing 'unjust' the process took years and years not exactly a back room deal.

It seems from the article that they just wanted to extract money out of Amazon. Moreover, they never gave a single reason on why they didn’t want Amazon to have the domain.

I vaguely remember something along the lines of using "Amazon isn't spelled Amazon in any of the countries in South America" as an argument.

A pretty stupid argument if you ask me.

It's not even technically correct: Guyana's official language is English. (Though it just barely includes any of the Amazon basin.)

This is what the ACTO requested [0]:

- a joint steering committee (ACTO and Amazon) for .amazon, giving ACTO countries the right to veto domains;

- delegation of second-level domains to ACTO countries;

- commitment from Amazon not to register domains that have significance to the region.

I haven't seen any news that suggest they were trying to extract money out of Amazon. It was Amazon that was flaunting money at ACTO.

[0] https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/zaluar-..., http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/pt-BR/notas-a-imprensa/20312-sol...

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