Book publishers blast Amazon’s plan to control domain names

Two industry groups argue that the retailer’s plan to control several generic top-level domains, including .book, .author, and .read, would be anti-competitive.

Amazon’s effort to control dozens of new generic top-level Internet domain names is drawing fire from a pair of publishing industry groups.

The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers oppose the Internet retail giant’s plan to control so-called generic top-level domains (gTLD) that end in suffixes .book, .author, and .read, arguing that such influence would be anti-competitive.

“Placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anticompetitive, allowing already dominant, well-capitalized companies to expand and entrench their market power,” Authors Guild President Scott Turow wrote to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the nonprofit that oversees the world’s Internet domain names. “The potential for abuse seems limitless.” read more