Brazil and Peru have lodged objections to a bid made by the US e-commerce giant for a prime new piece of cyberspace: ".amazon". Amazon wanted its brand to be a top-level domain name but the South American governments argue this would prevent the use of this internet address for environmental protection, the promotion of indigenous rights and other public interest uses. Until now, the differences between commercial, governmental and other types of identity were easily distinguished in every internet address by .com, .gov and 20 other categories.

But Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers wants to create generic top-level domains. Each one will cost $200,000. Brazil and Peru pointed out that Amazon should not be assigned a name that denotes an important geographic area that spans their territories, and is also used for certain regions and cross-border organisations. 

"Allowing private companies to register geographic names as gTLDs to reinforce their brand strategy or to profit from the meaning of these names does not serve, in our view, the public interest," the Brazilian ministry of science and technology said.

Brazil has been backed by other members of the Amazon Co-operation Treaty which include Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela. The book seller is not the only one to suffer in the battle for the use of its corporate name over the real places that they are named after.

Other disputed claims to names including ".patagonia" and ".shangrila.”Argentina said that the US outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia is should not be allowed a domain name that has been known far longer as a region of spectacular beauty.
China has disputed the domain ".shangrila", which is proposed by a hotel group of the same name because it belongs to a region in Yunnan province. Actually that claim is a little rubbish because the region was renamed as such in 2001 so that the local community could cash in on the fame the novel Lost Horizons.

Still the question remains is how can a US corporate take a name away from the people who live in a region?