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Hold your horses! The last wave of comments on .amazon hasn’t started yet

Kevin Murphy, May 24, 2019, 06:40:02 (UTC), Domain Registries

ICANN has yet to open the final (?) public comment period on Amazon’s .amazon gTLD applications, but it’s been receiving comments anyway.
As I blogged at the weekend, ICANN has now given all but final approval to .amazon, and the last hurdle is 30 days of public comments, on Amazon’s proposed Public Interest Commitments.
I noted at the time that the ability to comment had not yet opened, or that it was well hidden.
Over the last 24 hours or so, ICANN has nevertheless received about 15 comments about .amazon on its old new gTLD application comment system.
They’re all negative, urging ICANN to prioritize the rights of the Amazon region of South America over Amazon’s corporate IP rights.
Go here and search for the string “amazon” to locate and read them.
But according to ICANN, the 30 days of comment has not yet kicked off.
A spokesperson told DI last night that the .amazon applications are still being processed and that the PICs have not yet been formally published.
It’s not yet clear whether the new gTLD application comment system will be used, or whether ICANN will use the email-based system it uses by default for comment periods.
I expect ICANN will make a formal announcement when comments do open. Either way, I’ll blog about it here when the time comes.
Amazon’s proposed PICs were published as part of a letter to ICANN (pdf) last month.
Given the timing, it seems ICANN only has a few days to open the comment period if it wants to have any hope of approving .amazon during ICANN 65, which runs in Marrakech from June 24 to 27.


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Comments (3)

  1. I haven’t followed any of the updates on this within the last few weeks, but my gut feeling is that Amazon the company, should not be able to outweigh the legitimate interest of the Amazon nations and their government on an ‘initial use’ of the extension.

    • Acro says:

      Glad you mentioned “initial use” – the Amazons are part of the Greek folklore, so it’s the love of the conquistadors for mythology that baptized the region with that name. This is not the native name of the forest in South America.
      Amazon has already offered to provide meaningful subdomains, such as *.br.amazon for Brazil, to the countries of the region.

  2. Urania A Hunter says:

    I think it is outrageous that Amazon the company has more weight than the real Amazon in South America. The company is so big it throws its weight around like a big wrecking ball.

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