The European and International Booksellers Federation, EIBF, represents Booksellers Associations in the European Union and in the world. Through its Members it represents more than 25.000 bookselling businesses worldwide. Booksellers Associations in membership with EIBF have in membership all kind
of book retailers, terrestrial bookshops, online retailers, selling paper and electronic books.
We read that at its February 2013 meeting, the ICANN Board of Directors recognized the problems presented by applications that would restrict use of generic industry terms to a single company. Granting monopoly control of a TLD to a single industry member can create an unfair competitive advantage. Such an arrangement would work against both consumers and the industry associated with the generic term.
EIBF is of the strong opinion that indeed “closed generic” gTLD applications have to be invalidated when submitted by commercial entities operating in a sector of activity related to the closed generic gTLD .
In the case of a closed generic TLD like .books, the exclusivity granted to the winning applicant would de facto strengthen the position of the biggest bidder to have sole use of the gTLD in the book industry, would be anti-competitive and extremely detrimental to the book industry as a whole.
We are therefore asking ICANN not to offer for sale a generic gTLD for .book and other similar words in general usage.
http://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-closed-generic-05feb13/msg00045.html.