According to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report, online retail giant Amazon's request for owning new domain names is being opposed by two publishing industry groups - the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

The WSJ report has revealed that the argument that the two publishing groups have put forth to oppose Amazon's request is that competition will potentially be thwarted if Amazon is permitted to own such domain addresses which end in ".book," ".author," ".read" and other such suffixes.

As per the WSJ report, Amazon's allegedly anti-competitive plans to control so-called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) ending in the mentioned suffixes is also being opposed by rival bookseller Barnes & Noble Inc.

In its opposition of Amazon's plans, Barnes & Nobel said in its letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that if Amazon is allowed to control gTLDs, the move will "stifle competition in the bookselling and publishing industries, which are critical to the future of copyrighted expression in the U. S."

Meanwhile, asserting that the "potential for abuse" linked to Amazon's control of gTLDs would probably be "limitless," Scott Turow - president of the Authors Guild - wrote to ICANN: "Placing such generic domains in private hands is plainly anticompetitive, allowing already dominant, well-capitalized companies to expand and entrench their market power."