Roger,

Your concern about the use of  "restricted" and "limited" seems to me to be
largely baseless.  From the way the release is worded, it sounds like the
Museum Domain Management Assn. would just take over for the .MUSEUM domain
what ICANN has been doing all along for the existing .COM, .EDU, .ORG, .GOV,
.MIL and .NET domains (and any others I may have forgotten).  First there is
the matter of appropriate use:  Only non-profits can use the .org domain (or
so I understand).  Someone needs to check that a group is entitled to use
the .org domain.  Then there is the matter of exclusive use of a name within
that domain:  There can be only one "Ford.org" on the net for instance.
Someone has to decide whether that goes to the Henry Ford Museum, the Ford
Foundation (I assume there is one) or some other organization with the name
"Ford" in the title who may have nothing to do with Henry or his family or
business.

My biggest concern is that while increasing the number of top domains does
allow more groups to use "Ford" (to continue the example) as an address, it
is also less obvious which domain name you want.  If "Ford.org" is currently
in use by the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan (I'm not sure it is, but for the
sake of the example let's assume this to be the case), will they move to
"Ford.museum" and allow the Ford Foundation to have "Ford.org"?  Presumably
the automobile company has "Ford.com", but if they diversify into internet
services, they could also be "Ford.net".  Or what if Joe Ford starts his own
ISP and uses Ford.net.  People looking for any of the other Ford sites could
end up there by accident and not know that they needed to type .com or .org
instead, and Joe Ford would not be required to maintain links to the other
"Ford" sites for such lost souls.

This also increases the potential for things like "www.Whitehouse.com" which
was (still is?) a porn site that basically counted on the fact that some
people would type ".com" instead of ".org" to visit the US Presidential
website.  The name could as easily have been used by someone who wanted to
set up a "parody" site, or even by some opposition party who wanted to use
it to post more malicious attacks on the sitting president.

So, in the end, does this eliminate more confusion than it (potentially)
creates?  I'm not sure.

Larry Burke
Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania


-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Smith [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 11:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Why Should DOT MUSEUM domain names be controlled by an N.G.O .?


List Members & Colleagues,

I would be very interested in learning of your reactions to the media
release below which I received recently?  Interestingly enough ( as an ICOM
member of long standing ), I received this information on October 4th and
collectively we have only until the 27th to register any support or
opposition!

On a personal level, I have always adopted the Net as an OPEN platform for
information sharing and credibility of a site is built up over a period of
time, regardless of the source of physical location of the site owner.

The language that ICOM favours has always worried / annoyed me !

Words such as <restricted >,< limited > suggest to me a desire to CONTROL
rather than promote and this is at variance with the whole ethos of the Web.
In my opinion the whole initiative also smacks of a reactive rather than
proactive approach to the opportunities on the web.

If you are NOT a member of ICOM does your museum wish to be vetted by its
Museum Domain Management Association shell?

Personally, I think that if you are a museum (actual or virtual), then you
should have the opportunity to use the DOT MUSEUM top level domain?  What do
you think?

Roger Smith
[log in to unmask]
Former Chair of ICOM New Zealand &
Former Chair of ICOM MPR ( Marketing & Public Relations Committee )

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