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Amazon's Quest For Web Names Draws Foes
quantr writes in with a story about backlash to Amazon's request for ownership of new top-level domain names. "Large and small companies are vying for control of an array of new Internet domain names, but Amazon.com Inc.'s plans are coming under particular scrutiny. Two publishing industry groups, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, are objecting to the online retailer's request for ownership of new top-level domain names that are part of a long-awaited expansion of the Web's addressing scheme. They argue that giving Amazon control over such addresses—which include '.book,' '.author' and '.read'—would be a threat to competition and shouldn't be allowed. 'Placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anti-competitive,' wrote Scott Turow, Authors Guild president, 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.'"
I mean a SHITLOAD of money! Did YOU give us a shitload of money?
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
And then do what they want with the subdomains book. author.
Have gnu, will travel.
the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers... argue that giving Amazon control over such addresses—which include '.book,' '.author' and '.read'—would be a threat to competition and shouldn't be allowed.
You know? I agree with them... of would be like /.-ers raising a kickstarter to take the .grits TLD without giving a damn on the what Natalie would think.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Anyone who spent more than five pre-1999 minutes on the Internetties knew that the idea of a free-for-all of generic TLDs was more useless than the pope's nutsack. We watched the bubble burst before October, 2000 and saw what happened with otherwise-untrademark-able generic words was getting us into, and that was still with dotcom, dotorg, and doznet.
Why are we considering new TLDs to begin with? We're taking a good, loose system of categorisation and throwing it away because... why exactly?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
How is this any more controversial than if Amazon bought book.com, author.com, read.com? book.com is owned by B&N. Is anyone jumping in their ass because "The potential for abuse seems limitless?"
Because B&N doesn't own *.com, jackass.
Really, dude, if you're going to comment, at least have half a fucking clue how whatever it is you're commenting on works.
Sheesh.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Price for TLD registration has been set high enough to eliminate many (if not most) small businesses. This move pushes Internet into corporate hands even more.
Yeah... but .com is only valuable because only a few of those top level domains exist. It's essentially the same thing, and GP's point is perfectly valid.
No, it's not. ".com" is a company. The idea of the more descriptive TLDs, like eg ".museum". is that it implies that what you find at that site is a legitimate member of that group. So Smithsonian.museum will take you to the actual Smithsonian Institute. If Amazon owned ".book" they would work to make it imply that "Book_title.book" was the legitimate site for any book to have. Every other publisher and/or author would end up having to either pay Amazon to get this, or have Amazon links all over it. Or more likely, both. Amazon would effectively have a tax on every book published.