Amazon wants to buy generic book Internet domains

Amazon is interested in buying Internet top-level domain names such as ".book," ".author" and ".read", in order to expand its reach to customers, reported Fast Company on Monday.  

However, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP),  as well as retailers such as Barnes & Noble, objected to this bid. As Digitalspy writes, they are all concerned about the ambitions of the e-commerce giant to monopolize in the book market and claimed that its "potential for abuse seems limitless." They say that granting a single private company the exclusive use of a closed domain string would "defeat the expressed public interest purposes" for which generic top-level domains (gTLDs) were created.

Placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anti-competitive, Scott Turow, Authors Guild president, wrote in an official letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). 

In addition, the AAP notes that Amazon's goal to register such domains is "strictly control its use in pursuit of the company's business goals". "From inception, the introduction of new gTLDs has been promoted as a means to increase competition, add consumer choice, support internet freedom, expand market differentiation and diversify service providers," said Allan Adler, the general counsel and vice president of government affairs at the AAP.

Barnes & Noble, one of Amazon’s chief rivals, said Amazon should not be permitted to control the domains it is requesting because it would have “disastrous consequences not only for bookselling but for the American public", reported SiteProNews.

On the other hand, Amazon declared that by securing the domains .book, .read and .author, they will bring innovative ways to “surprise and delight our customers,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

ICANN is a nonprofit that manages the world's registry of Internet domain names.  Last December, it initiated an international process to allow companies to register for new generic top-level domains which do not include the usual suffixes like .com, .org or .co.uk., according to Digitalspy.   Applications submitted to ICANN included .ferrari, .ford, .microsoft, .netflix and .apple, all from their respective official companies. But Amazon EU also submitted bids for various generic web suffixes, such as .music, .movies, .mobile and .app.