I should have added that following the decision, MuseDoma will first need
to open it membership to all interested, then adopt criteria for awarding
.museum domains, and after that contract with perhaps 2 or 3 domain
registration organisations the administration of the scheme - hence the
aim of a 1 July 2001 launch date (which will in fact allow less than 6
months to get everything up and running from the 31 December deadline for
completing all the contract and other legal arrangements.

Also, as .museum will be restricted to qualifying bodies (as with e.g. .mil
or .gov at the present time) there will have to be a manual checking
process - probably involving national organisations with the required
local knowledge - before any domain request is approved.

At the ICOM meeting in Paris on Tuesday, Cary Carp - who has been working
on the development of the .museum concept for over 5 years, and who set up
the successful joint ICOM/Getty application - stressed that in accordance
with the new international standards (which aim to stamp out the current
"cyber-squatting" and commercial profiteering in domain naming), MuseDoma
will NOT follow the previous "first come, first served" practice in domain
naming, but will instead evaluate all possibilities and claims for any
particularly popular prospective domain name.  So anyone hoping to make a
fortune out of the rushing through registrations of "www.national.museum"
or "www.the-very-best.museum" will be out of luck!


Patrick Boylan

> ===============================
>
> ICANN has announced the adoption of a .museum top level domain, but the
> contracts etc. for this have yet to be awarded formally - it is hoped to
> the non-profit MuseDoma Inc. set up initially by the International Council
> of Museums and the J. Paul Getty Trust (though membership will be open to
> all in due course).
>
> If MuseDoma is confirmed it plans to launch .museum on 1 July 2001.
>
> (Visit http://www.musedoma.org regularly to keep up with the lastest
> developments.)
>
>
>
> Patrick Boylan
>
>
>

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