The strange lawsuit that several Latin American countries would lose against Amazon

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Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia began a legal battle in 2012 against the e-commerce giant, but now they are being defeated

In 2012, the e-commerce giant, Amazon, decided to apply for the exclusive rights to use all the domains ending in '.amazon' instead of the traditional '.com'. That same year, the countries of the Amazon basin, where the world's largest rainforest is located, demonstrated their outrage and rushed to appeal the process. The argument was that this name referred to its geographical location and could not be used by private for-profit, much less monopolized by a single company.

Leer en español: La extraña demanda que perderían varios países latinoamericanos contra Amazon

Currently, the struggle of these countries seems to have come to an end. Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname, who were involved in the appeal, would have to cede all the rights of the '.amazon' domain to the most valuable public company in the world.

A short victory

The organization that was responsible for mediating the appeal process was the International Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN), initially formed as a non-profit organization under the United States Department of Commerce. Since then, faced with the growing need to regulate the names of domains and other web identifiers, the organization transcended the United States and became a world authority on the topic of the protection and proper use of names on the Internet.

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In 2013, after a year of deliberation with States, companies and web domain administrators, ICANN decided that Amazon's request 'could not proceed'. This would mark a significant victory for the countries of the Amazon basin.

However, the victory was short, as Amazon immediately requested an independent review process on the decision. The organization effectively reversed it, forcing the States to seek a negotiated exit with Amazon on the subject of the domain.

An unfortunate defeat

Since the initial ICANN's decision was reversed, negotiations between the parties that allowed the use of the domain '.amazon' by the North American company should have advanced. However, the negotiations were unsuccessful.

The eight states that share the Amazon failed to reach an agreement with Amazon before the stipulated deadline, April of this year. Therefore, ICANN will precede the formalization of Amazon Inc.'s request after a period of 30 days to allow comments and public discussion.

What followed the decision were unanimous demonstrations of outrage from the governments of the countries involved with what they called, according to Reuters, as an inadequate governance of the internet.

Presidents Martín Vizcarra of Peru, Iván Duque of Colombia, Lenín Moreno of Ecuador and Evo Morales of Bolivia were the ones who most expressed their disagreement with the decision, with a joint declaration in Lima during the meeting of the Andean Community of Nations.

"The decision sets a serious precedent by giving priority to private commercial interests over the considerations of the State and its public policies, the rights of indigenous peoples and the preservation of the Amazon," read their statement.

LatinAmerican Post | Pedro Bernal

Translated from "La extraña demanda que perderían varios países latinoamericanos contra Amazon"