Amazon has applied to ICANN for assignment of the registry for management of the TLD “.book” (and other TLDs, such as “.author”).
If the request is accepted it would end up managing the top-level domain .book. The assignment procedure is still in progress. The preliminary assessment of applications by ICANN should be completed by the summer. Amazon is not the only company to have applied for the award of the TLD domain “.book”.
As stated in the request made to ICANN, Amazon would manage the TLD “.book” “in support of the business aims of Amazon“. Therefore, as far as we understand it, the subdomains (such as amazon.book) would be distributed only to Amazon itself and its subsidiaries. In addition, “All domains in the .BOOK registry will remain the property of Amazon“.
This means that the TLD in question would be a “closed” domain, not open to requests for registration of second-level domains by third parties, as is the case for the “.com” domain.
Some competitors have come out against the assignment of the domain as a “closed” domain, (such as Barnes & Nobles, for example), as well as various associations and institutions.
In general, if ICANN assigns the management of the registry of generic domain names (like “.libro”, “.car” etc.) to persons or companies who propose not to allow third parties to have access to the subdomain of the first level domain, this could facilitate the creation of dominant positions in the economic sectors relating to the generic name in question.
Thus in the case the .book domain, the danger would be that it strengthens the market power of an operator which is already very strong in the distribution of books and ebooks.
The strengthening or creation of dominant positions of the TLDs in the markets concerned (especially those with generic names in the process of assignment) also reflects the dominant position of ICANN itself in the market of the assignment of management of registries for TLDs.
In short, the perennial battle between cases of “closing” and “opening” of the network and its infrastructure remains current and every day seems to be given a new chapter.
