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Governments blast ICANN over Amazon gTLDs
ICANN seems to have found itself in the center of a diplomatic crisis, after eight South American governments strongly denied they approve of Amazon being given the .amazon gTLD.
The Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, along with the government of Brazil, blasted ICANN CEO Goran Marby for multiple alleged “untrue, misleading, unfortunate and biased statements”, in a December 7 letter (pdf) published yesterday.
ACTO claims that ICANN was “premature” and “ill-informed” when its board of directors un-rejected Amazon’s gTLD applications in an October resolution.
In bruising terms, the letter goes on to criticize Marby for failing to set up promised talks between ACTO and Amazon and then characterizing “informal” conversations with Brazil’s Governmental Advisory Committee rep as if they represented ACTO’s collective view.
It’s just about as harsh a critique of ICANN management by governments I’ve read.
Amazon, the retailer, has been trying to get .amazon, along with transliterations in Chinese and Japanese scripts, since 2012.
Its applications were rejected — technically, placed in “Will Not Proceed” status — after GAC advice in July 2013. The advice was full-consensus, the strongest type, after the lone holdout, the United States, at the time trying to win support for the IANA transition, bowed out.
The advice came because the ACTO countries believe “Amazon” is a geographic string that belongs to them.
But Amazon filed an Independent Review Process appeal with ICANN, which it won last year.
The IRP panel declared that the GAC advice was built on shaky, opaque foundations and that the committee should not have a blanket “veto” over new gTLD applications.
ICANN has ever since been trying to figure out a way to comply with the IRP ruling while at the same time appeasing the GAC and the ACTO countries.
The GAC gave it a little wriggle room a year ago when it issued advice that ICANN should “continue facilitating negotiations between the [ACTO] member states and the Amazon corporation”.
ICANN took this to mean that its earlier advice to reject the bids had been superseded, and set about trying to get Amazon and ACTO to come to an agreement.
Amazon, for its part, has offered ACTO nations a suite of cultural protections, an offer to support future applications for .amazonia or similar, and $5 million worth of products and services, including free Kindle devices.
It has also offered to bake a collection of Public Interest Commitments — these have never been published — into its registry contract, which would enable ACTO governments to bring compliance actions against the company in future.
That proposal was made in February, and ICANN has supposed to have been facilitating talks ever since.
According to a timeline provided by Marby, in a November letter (pdf) to ACTO secretary general Jacqueline Mendoza, ICANN has been working in this facilitation role since November 2017.
Problem is, at almost every step of the way it’s been dealing with Brazilian GAC rep Benedicto Filho, rather than with Mendoza herself, apparently on the assumption that when he made noises favorable to the Amazon proposal he was speaking for ACTO.
And that’s not the case, according to Mendoza and Filho, in the newly published letters.
Whatever input Filho had was in the context of “informal and general conversations in which it was repeatedly and clearly indicated that no country had any mandate to negotiate on behalf of the other members of ACTO”, Mendoza wrote.
Filho himself goes on to accuse Marby of several “gross misrepresentation[s]” and “flagrant inaccuracies”, in an increasingly strident set of three emails forward by Mendoza to Marby.
He claims that he informed Marby every step of the way that he was not authorized to speak on behalf of ACTO, and that the idea he was involved in “obscure and secret negotiations” is “offensive”.
It seems that either one or both men is bullshitting about the extent to which Filho represented himself as an ACTO rep, or there has been a genuine breakdown of communication. For want of any definitive evidence, it seems fair to give them both the benefit of the doubt for now.
The situation as it stands now is that ACTO has called off planned peace talks with Amazon, facilitated by Marby, and has filed a Request for Reconsideration in an attempt to overturn the ICANN board’s October resolution.
Mendoza says ACTO will not engage in talks concerning .amazon until this request has been processed.
So the fate of .amazon now lies with ICANN’s Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee, which is responsible for rejecting processing reconsideration requests. The test is usually whether the requester has brought new information to light that was not available when the board made its decision.
BAMC can either figure out a way to accept the request and put .amazon back in its “Will Not Proceed” status, smoothing out the path to negotiations (re)opening but placing Amazon back in indefinite limbo, or it can reject it and risk ACTO walking away completely.
It’s a tricky spot to be in, and no mistake.
WHY the hell is ICANN lobbying for Amazon with the money of domain names registrants ??????
THAT MUST STOP IMMEDIATELY !