NEW POLICIES FOR REGISTRATION OF NAMES IN THE .MUSEUM TOP-LEVEL DOMAIN

                News Release - For Immediate Release

Stockholm, Sweden, 18 February 2004 - The Museum Domain Management
Association (MuseDoma) announced today that new policies for the
registration of names in the .museum top-level domain ("dot-museum" -
http://about.museum) will take effect on 1 March 2004.

Earlier this year it became possible to register Internationalized Domain
Names (IDN - http://about.museum/idn ) and the changes in the .museum
naming conventions that this required are now being extended to apply to
all names registered in the domain. The new policies expand the use of the
second-level in .museum. This is the portion of the name that appears to
the immediate left of the the top-level label, "museum".

The second-level was initially structured to support the indexed search
facility located at http://index.museum. With the appearance of what is
expected to become a wide range of scripts and languages in the
second-level vocabulary, the number of names that do not conveniently fit
into the index will become significant. The naming conventions have
therefore been modified to permit the use of the index if a name holder
feels it suitable and otherwise to accept the direct registration of
second-level names. It is also expected that a single organization may wish
to register names of both types.

The continuing development of the index requires that generic terms which
might appear in it are available for shared use. Names in the form
"city.museum" or "discipline.museum" are therefore reserved for inclusion
in three-label names in the form "ourname.city.museum". Names with a
specific designation on the second level such as, "abcde.museum",
"ourart.museum", or "blåröd.museum" may, however, be registered directly.

Requests for the registration of two-label names based on the new naming
conventions will be accepted effective immediately and placed in two
separate queues. The first will contain requests submitted by the holders
of names that were formally registered as of the date of this news release.
These will be processed in the order received and approved names will be
available for registration from 1 March. Requests in this queue will be
given priority over names in the second queue until 8 March. Requests for
names received from all other applicants will be placed in the second
queue, which will also be processed in the order received. The names in it
will become available for registration beginning on 8 March. (All deadlines
are at 0000 UTC on the indicated date.) Thereafter, all requests will be
processed in normal order as they are received.

Requests may be submitted via the forms provided at https://ens.museum or
by e-mail to [log in to unmask] If you have already registered names with
one of the authorized .museum registrars you may also submit your request
directly to the registrar.

The formal statement of the new naming conventions and a parallel
explanatory text were posted for public comment on 26 January and have
since been modified to reflect community response. No suggestions required
the substantive revision of anything in the drafts and no significant
changes of any type are anticipated prior to the new policies going into
effect. The documents are located at:

        http://about.museum/policy/policy.ver3.html
        http://about.museum/naming/naming.ver2.html

For more information, please contact:

Kate Parson
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel: +46 8 5195 5150

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