Book Publishers Protest Amazon's Application to Own All of .Book Domain

Posted on March 8, 2013

Publishers Weekly reports that a group of book publishers is trying to stop Amazon.com's bid to purchase the .book domain from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). The Association of American Publishers (AAP) opposes Amazon's application saying that giving Amazon the exclusive use of the .book domain would not be in the public's best interest.

If Amazon is allowed to purchase the domain, no one else can use .book. The AAP argues that giving the domain exclusively would violate the "traditional primary meaning" of the word book. In addition, such an action would hurt book sellers, authors, publishers, libraries, agents, teachers and other professions traditionally associated with books.

These generic domains, like .book, are known as generic top-level domains or gTLDs. ICANN's website about gTLDs can be found at newgtlds.icann.org. ICANN says the goal of its new program is "to increase competition and choice in the domain name space."