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Amazon’s dot-brand likely doomed as US withdraws geo objection
The US government is set to allow the Governmental Advisory Committee to kill off Amazon’s application for .amazon, along with eight other new gTLDs with geographic flavors.
In a position paper published last night, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said:
the United States is willing in Durban to abstain and remain neutral on .shenzen (IDN in Chinese), .persiangulf, .guangzhou (IDN in Chinese), .amazon (and IDNs in Japanese and Chinese), .patagonia, .yun, and .thai, thereby allowing the GAC to present consensus objections on these strings to the Board, if no other government objects.
According to a GAC source, US protests were the “only reason” the GAC was unable to reach a consensus objection to these applications during the Beijing meeting three months ago.
Consensus would strengthen the objection, giving the ICANN board the presumption that the applications, some of which have already passed Initial Evaluation, should not be approved.
None of the nine applications in question met ICANN’s strict definition of a “geographic” string, but they nevertheless look geographic enough to raise concerns with GAC members.
Amazon’s application for .amazon raised the eyebrows of the Latin American countries that share the Amazonia region.
The company has been in talks with these GAC members since Beijing. If it wants to secure .amazon, it has a little over a week to address their concerns, if it wants to avoid an objection.
While the US is now promising to drop its objection to the GAC’s objection, it does not appear to have changed its position, claiming that governments have no rights to geographic strings. NTIA said:
The United States affirms our support for the free flow of information and freedom of expression and does not view sovereignty as a valid basis for objecting to the use of terms, and we have concerns about the effect of such claims on the integrity of the process.
…
the United States is not aware of an international consensus that recognizes inherent governmental rights in geographic terms.
It’s calling for a rethink of the process, during the mandatory review of the new gTLD program that ICANN must conduct before accepting a second round of applications.
Given that the GAC currently has the ability to object to any string for any reason, it’s difficult to see how a review could achieve the NTIA’s goal without reining in the GAC’s powers.
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