Latin American Countries Reject .Amazon & .Patagonia

While the ICANN 46 meeting in Beijing was warming up on the other side of the globe the “Cuarta Conferencia Ministerial sobre la Sociedad de la Información de América Latina y el Caribe” (4th ministerial conference on information society of Latin America and Caribbean) was taking place in Montevideo.

The “Montevideo Declaration” (PDF) runs to 4 pages, but there’s an important section in there which deals with new TLDs. In simple terms the Latin American countries are sending a single clear message. No application for .amazon or .patagonia will be acceptable:

Reject any attempt to appropriate, without the consent of the respective countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, the denominations “amazon” and “patagonia” in any language, or any other generic top-level domain (gTLD) names referring to geographical areas or historical, cultural or natural features, which should be preserved as part of the heritage and cultural identity of the countries of the region

Erick Iriarte Ahon explained the statement’s context:

“ELAC is the multistakeholder organisation for Information Society in Latin America so it represents both government, civil society and private business. The statement was passed unanimously.”

Assuming that some of the ELAC members will be represented at the GAC at this week’s ICANN meeting you can expect to see more on this.

By Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade. He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

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