Barnes and noble wanted one of these domains and sent an appeal to ICANN. They lost the appeal.
Amazon operates these domains within a category of new domain names deemed “closed generics”, which are domain names that companies have successfully bid on or outright paid to get provisioned and own them for their own use and no one else’s. There has been persistent concern raised that this might create unfair monopolies especially for online shopping.
Amazon is the largest holder of closed generic domains on the internet. Nearly all of their domains they own are not able to be purchased and are for Amazon use only. There has been no consequences for this action and it seems unlikely there ever will for the foreseeable future as well.
Be sure, prior to buying any book or book-related thing online, to check if that ‘small, independent’-looking website you’re about to click on isn’t a front for Amazon. In the same way record megacorps create ‘fake indie’ labels, Amazon creates fake indie online booksellers, or buys real ones out (for example, Abebooks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbeBooks).
I feel no guilt whatsoever using libgen, internet archive etc. if I cannot find a book from outside the Amazon monolith.
If you want a web front end for actual independent bookstores https://bookshop.org/ is excellent. You’ll likely pay a small premium over Amazon but you will directly support independent bookstores and publishers.
Also just as a PSA, GoodReads is also Amazon owned and I recommend everyone to check out alternatives like BookWyrm (Activity Pub integrated) and StoryGraph.
There is also Libro.fm!
So glad to see someone else mention them. Sometimes I feel like no one knows about it. I do mainly audiobooks because of time constraints and visual problems, and I always support Firestorm Books in Asheville, NC. Cooperatively owned local bookshop a few hours from me.
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Indeed!