Battle for the .book Domain

Battle for the .book Domain

Battle for the .book Domain

By : Tadween Editors

Amazon has come under critical fire recently in the publishing world for its attempt to take control of generic top-level domains (gTLD) that end in .book, .author, and .read.

The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Amazon rival Barnes & Noble
have all taken issue with Amazon’s pursuit of the domain names. By allowing Amazon to have the monopoly on such domain names would give them greater and unchecked authority over the presence of the publishing world on the internet.  

The increase in the number of domains, which means new suffixes such as .com and .org, will counter the amplified use of the internet across the globe and will make obtaining website names easier, particularly for countries outside of the United States. However, if certain corporations are given monopoly over domains, such as Amazon’s desire for .book and others, that will close the doors for others to be able to use such domain names. Those who win the right to the domain names up for bidding will be allowed to retain the domain name use for themselves or to sell the use of the name.

To object to Amazon’s move, Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild, wrote a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN),
which has control over the use of domain names online and is running the bid for the new domains. Turow states that “placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anticompetitive.”

More specifically, Turow takes issue with “allowing already dominant, well-capitalized companies to expand and entrench their market power,” and claims that, “the potential for abuse seems limitless.”

Siding with Turow, the American Association of Publishers (AAP) sees Amazon’s desire to obtain the domains as pure business. AAP general counsel Allan Adler
stated on the organization’s website that “the vast book community — authors, publishers, sellers, libraries, readers, educators, editors, researchers, literary agents, collectors, printers, clubs, archives and many others — shouldn’t be barred from connecting around the world through the .book domain. This was the stated mission of the ICANN initiative and should be its goal.”

As a big competitor of the corporation, Barnes & Noble has also criticized Amazon’s desire for the domain names as
an attempt to obtain an unfair advantage over competing booksellers.

In total
, ICANN reported that Amazon has applied for seventy six new domains, which include .amazon, .music, and .cloud, in addition to .book, .author, and .read. However, Amazon is not alone in the massive domain grab. Google Inc has applied for 101 domains, including .androuf, .youtube, and, in competition with Amazon, .music (see a full list of the domains on ICANN’s website).

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NEWTON in Focus: Egypt

This week we highlight various NEWTON texts relevant to the study of Egypt. The authors of these texts write from a wide range of perspectives and approach questions with which Egypt has grappled, not only in the wake of Tahrir, but throughout its modern existence. We encourage you to integrate these texts into your curricula in the coming semesters.

If you wish to recommend a book or peer-reviewed article for a feature in NEWTON—whether on Egypt or on any other topics relevant to the region—please email us at reviews@jadaliyya.com. To stay up to date with ongoing discussions by scholars and instructors in the field, sign up for Jadaliyya’s Pedagogy Section

Gilbert Achcar, “Eichmann in Cairo: The Eichmann Affair in Nasser`s Egypt.”

Nezar AlSayyad, Cairo: Histories of a City

Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance

Ziad Fahmy, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture

James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: A History, Third Edition

Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism

Pascale Ghazaleh, editor, Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World

Bassam Haddad, Rosie Bsheer, and Ziad Abu-Rish, editors, The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order?

Mervat F. Hatem, Literature, Gender, and Nation-Building in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: The Life and Works of `A’sha Taymur

Nelly Hanna, Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early Modern Capitalism (1600 1800)

Linda Herrera, “Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt.”

Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, editors, Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North

Wilson Chacko Jacob, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940

Karima Khalil, editor, Messages from Tahrir

Marwan M. Kraidy, “The Revolutionary Body Politic: Preliminary Thoughts on a Neglected Medium in the Arab Uprisings”

Alan Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History

Roger Owen, The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life

Paul Sedra, From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth Century Egypt

Mohammad Salama and Rachel Friedman, “Locating the Secular in Sayyid Qutb"

Jeannie Sowers, Environmental Politics in Egypt: Activists, Experts, and the State

Joshua Stacher, Adaptable Autocrats: Regime Power in Egypt and Syria