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In an effort to block Amazon from getting the top-level domain .amazon, Brazil may have put governments on a crash course with the private sector over control of the web.
In an aggressive and contradictory letter [PDF] on Wednesday to the overseer of the internet's domain name system, ICANN, Brazilian technology minister Benedicto Filho insisted the US non-profit not approve the creation of .amazon, and states strongly that governments have the final say on what should appear online.
As you may well know, Brazil is particularly enamored with the word Amazon, being the home of the Amazon Jungle. And it doesn't want some moneybags American retailer nabbing the top-level domain for the rainforest.
"It is the right and duty of governments – and not of Amazon the company, nor any panel constituted by three nationals of a single country in their individual capacity, nor even of the ICANN Board of Directors – to identify the public policy issues that may justify the Board to adopt certain decisions," Filho said.
He goes on to say that if ICANN was "required to substitute the views of governments and the GAC [Governmental Advisory Committee] for its own judgments ... it would be dealing a fatal blow to the multi-stakeholder governance model upon which ICANN is based."
In essence, Brazil says that unless ICANN does what it says – in this case not allow for the creation of the .amazon top-level domain for Jeff Bezos' Amazon – then the entire model of internet governance that the organization represents, where all parties including governments, the technical community and business have an equal say, is invalid.
That extraordinary contradiction – that an equitable decision-making process only exists so long as governments have the final say – is not the only one in the letter.
Filho goes on to insist that all governments agree with Brazil and Peru's position that .amazon not be added to the internet, but in making his case only cites meetings held in Brazil by Brazilian interests.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/27/brazil_dot_amazon_gtld/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday October 09 2017, @10:42PM (3 children)
I think an important moment of failure in the DNS system came almost immediately when .com, .net, and .org stopped meaning things.
In the original designs, you would know that Zarkoloney.net was a network infrastructure provider because it qualified for ".net", that Funkmasonicality.org was a non-profit or non-commercial enterprise because of qualifying for the ".org", and Lengthenyourlifewithoursnakeoilpills.com was a business that had to settle for ".com". Names were intended to *mean* something.*
In the words of the immortal anonymous wikipedia editor concerning .org, for example, "The domain was originally intended for non-profit entities, but this restriction was not enforced and has been removed."
In other words, the names are meaningless (Some NGOs have .net addresses, infrastructure providers commonly have .coms, and snake oil salesmen have no hesitation to register .orgs).
Even if .amazon was under government control, which government? The Amazon rainforest passes through nine countries, not just Brazil who does have the majority at 60% of it, as I mention in another reply in this thread.
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* A smattering of such rules remain. For example, to get a .om domain (Oman), wikipedia's list of TLD's page tells me "Registrant must have company or trademark registered in Oman as well as a local administrative contact." But most domains have a rule along the lines of "Registrant must have paid money to purchase the registration of a domain."
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:39AM
Brazil aren't asking for government control of .amazon, they're asking for the registration to be blocked entirely, such that nobody gets it.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:18AM
We pretty much recognise the Amazon as synonymous with Brazil, even though we share parts of it. It's seen as "mostly Brazil, and we get to have a little bit too".
Actually, to make an even finer point, we kind of see the Amazon - or "Amazonas" - (river, jungle and people) as their own entity, in many ways...it's a whole other world.
Source: am Colombian
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday October 10 2017, @09:50AM
sudo mod me up