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>>> NINCH-ANNOUNCE <[log in to unmask]> 01/30/01 03:03PM >>>
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
January 30, 2001



            ARTS WIRE STORY ON ICANN APPROVAL OF .MUSEUM DOMAIN
                    http://www.artswire.org/current.html 



>Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 17:52:34 -0800
>To: [log in to unmask] 
>From: Arts Wire Current <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Arts Wire Current, January 30, 2001

FROM:
_______________________________________________________
Arts Wire CURRENT              January 30,  2001
Arts Wire CURRENT              Volume 10, No. 5
Arts Wire CURRENT
Arts Wire CURRENT              Judy Malloy, Editor
Arts Wire CURRENT              [log in to unmask] 
_______________________________________________________
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* ICANN Tentatively Approves .museum Domain Suffix
     > Criteria for Registration to Include Virtual Entities
     > Think Locally/Act Globally Model Envisioned for Museum
          Community;
     > Critics Express Concern about ICANN Process and Effect on
         Online Creativity Outside of Museum Settings

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_______________________________________________________
.MUSEUM DOMAIN SUFFIX TENTATIVELY APPROVED

Along with .aero, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro, and .biz,
the domain name suffix .museum has been selected for further
negotiation by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers. (ICANN) Following that approval, the ICANN Board will
forward its recommendations to the U.S. Department of Commerce for
implementation.

In 1998, the U.S. Commerce Department approved the creation of a
new corporation called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers. One of the key tasks assigned to ICANN was to
increase the number of available domain names by creating new
top-level domains taking pressure off of current domains like
.com.

The .museum domain suffix would "give museums the possibility of
registering Internet addresses with a distinct museum identity and
would allow the users of the Internet to recognize this as a sign
of authenticity," according to the International Council of
Museums.(ICOM) ICOM, headquartered in Paris and the J. Paul Getty
Trust in Los Angeles are the two founding members of the Museum
Domain Management Association (MuseDoma) which submitted an
application to ICANN in October 2000 for the establishment of a
.museum top level domain. (TLD)

"One of the most exciting aspects of having a dedicated
top-level domain for the museum community, and very likely to
have been a pivotal consideration in its approval, is its
prototypal nature," states Cary Karp, Director of Internet
Strategy and Technology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.
Karp with Ken Hamma, Assistant Director, J. Paul Getty Museum and
Project Director www.getty.edu, spearheaded the .museum TLD.

"Dot-museum will be the first of what is envisioned as a
significant number of additional TLDs dedicated to as many
distinct aspects of cultural activity as can successfully be
argued by agencies wishing to operate such domains. Including a
.art among them would be as reasonable as possibly could be," he
added.

"I think it is in the potential for greater visibility of museums
online, thus facilitating the communications and educational
missions of museums worldwide, Hamma, who expects that the new
TLD will greatly increase the precision and recall of searches for
museums online, noted. "Visibility will be enhanced greatly by a
common naming scheme in a single domain, rather than as is the
case now, being scattered across several of the top-level domains.
Because the museum domain is restricted, this visibility will
translate also to recognizability and the general realm of
authenticity."

However, some artists and arts administrators are concerned that
registration in .museum will be restricted to museums and museum
organizations according to the definition established by the ICOM.

"While the .museum domain was undoubtedly undertaken with best
intentions, the notion of a legitimizing body deciding what
qualifies as a museum and what does not seems to create more
problems than the new domain will solve," Arnold Kramer commented
in a discussion of the proposed .museum TLD on the MUSWEB
listserv.  "No matter how carefully these decisions are made, the
idea that there is a sanctioning body deciding who is legitimate
and who is not is anathema." Kramer is Director of Outreach
Technology at the Holocaust Museum where he runs a group that is
responsible for making museum intellectual and interpretive
resources accessible via electronic systems, especially the web.
However, he emphasized that he was speaking as an individual not
as a representative of his institution.


CRITERIA FOR REGISTRATION TO INCLUDE VIRTUAL ENTITIES

The primary criterion for registration is being a museum by the
ICOM definition, as well as the many professionals and
professional membership associations that serve the museum
community. However, membership in ICOM or any other professional
or regional organization is not a criterion for registration.

The ICOM Statutes define a museum as "a non-profit making,
permanent institution in the service of society and of its
development, and open to the public which acquires, conserves,
researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study,
education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their
environment."

According to Cary Karp, the ICOM Definition is subject to
modification at the organization's triennial General Assemblies.
"The next such occasion is in July of this year, at which time we
also plan on launching the operation of .museum," he said.

Initial concern about the eligibility of virtual entities is being
addressed, Karp told Arts Wire, and he added that a resolution to
expand the definition to include organizations dealing with
intangible cultural property is on the agenda. "Assuming, as is
all but a foredrawn conclusion, that the resolution is adopted,
virtual museums will able to register in .museum. Should there be
any delay in the adoption of the resolution, MuseDoma will invoke
its mandated ability to extend the scope of the ICOM Definition
for its own purposes and be recognizing virtual museums from the
outset," he noted.


THINK LOCALLY/ACT GLOBALLY MODEL ENVISIONED FOR MUSEUM COMMUNITY

In addition to the visibility factors noted earlier, Ken Hamma
also told Arts Wire that they expected that the .museum process
would begin to increase the sense of community in the online
environment for museums. "Response so far strongly suggests that
this is the case, and that by creating a locus for that community
we may be able to target a set of concerns about being online that
neither money nor software are able to," he noted.  "We are
anxious to see how this will develop and are hopeful that it will
contribute in this intangible way to help bridge the so-called
digital divide that exists for thousands of museums and
exponentially larger numbers of online visitors."

He imagines a model in which this domain can think locally with
museums and their associations around the world, and then act
globally in ways that benefit the entire community.  Ideas under
consideration which would further these goals are to waive
registration fees for museums with operating budgets under a
certain amount; to provide basic, limited Web hosting; to provide
simple Web site management tools; to provide reference services
for museum needs; and to provide regional or global services such
as self-serve calendar facilities.

"....The .museum exercise is solving problems and gathering
experience that will significantly ease the path towards the
establishment of further cultural sector TLDs. MuseDoma looks
forward to being able to place its experience at the disposal of
other agencies within this sector," Cary Karp emphasized.


CONCERN EXPRESSED ABOUT EFFECT ON ONLINE CREATIVITY OUTSIDE OF
MUSEUM SETTINGS

However, in an open letter to Cary Karp, curator/web artist Jon
Ippolito  -- a co-author with Joline Blais and Keith Frank of the
"hyperfable"  FAIR E-TALES currently featured on The Alternative
Museum Web site --  wonders how the proposed .museum TLD might
affect online creativity that takes place *outside* a museum
setting, an issue which he believes should be critical to anyone
who cares about museums or the future of online culture.

Ippolito, who emphasizes that he is speaking for himself and not
for the institution for which he works, addresses MuseDoma's
argument that a major goal of the new domain suffix is to bridge
the digital divide. "I am sure that this argument appealed to
ICANN, which is charged with the difficult task of expanding the
Web's name space without undermining its  open architecture,
(ICANN seems to take this mandate seriously enough to  have
rejected suffixes like .union and .health as 'insufficiently
democratic.')" he states.

"....So let's assume for the sake of argument that .museum will
encourage more smaller museums to take the leap to cyberspace,"
Ippolito continues. "What of the countless offline alternative
spaces and exhibition halls that do not maintain a permanent
collection of objects? Once we museums have claimed the best of
the virtual real estate, what chance do these numerous
alternatives have of competing for hits from the lay
public? In an attention economy like the Web, small advantages can
make big differences. Jane Doe looks up the artist Bill Viola in
a search  engine and gets links for five .orgs and one .museum.
Which link is she going to follow?"

Ippolito also noted to Arts Wire that he worries that "as soon as
we open the gates to alternative spaces and virtual museums, any
line drawn in an attempt to distinguish curatorial endeavors is
going to amount to  an arbitrary exclusion of comparable
paradigms. I pity the committee assigned the task of coming up
with a 'clearly stated definition' that will tell me why, say,
Rhizome's ArtBase is a museum but Olia Lialina's Last Real Net
Art Museum is not, or why the Medialess Archive is a museum but
Freenet is not."

In the conclusion to his open letter, he asks fellow museum
professionals "to keep in mind that our mandate as museums is not
to compete with the cultural production going on outside our
walls, but to reflect and preserve it. How unfortunate it would
be for established museums to unwittingly erase the heritage they
are meant to preserve by gerrymandering the name space!"


CYBER-RIGHTS GROUPS QUESTION ICANN PROCESS

In news which may effect all newly requested TLDS and petitions
for new ones, last week a coalition of cyber-rights groups and
scholars, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, (CPSR) issued a
joint letter to the Department of Commerce calling for hearings
and additional public commentary on recent Internet
domain name decisions. The groups are questioning the closed
process -- stating that it violates the Due Process clause of the
Constitution and the Federal Administrative Procedures Act

The Cyber-Rights groups emphasizes that "The process got off to a
bad start when ICANN announced that it would require a $50,000
non-refundable fee from domain name applicants, thus skewing the
pool towards those organizations able to afford a $50,000 lottery
ticket. Deadlines for public comment were missed, and the period
for public input was small."

The letter also cites ICANN's rejection of a .union proposal as
"based on unfounded speculation that the international labor
organizations that proposed this new top level domain name were
somehow undemocratic" and noted that the "procedures being used
gave the proponents no opportunity to reply to this unfounded
accusation."

According to POLITECH, Energy and Commerce Chairman Billy Tauzin
(R-LA) and U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) are scheduling a
Subcommittee on Telecommunications hearing in February to examine
the ICANN decision process.

Sources/resources:

INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF MUSEUMS (ICOM) -- http://www.icom.org 

J. PAUL GETTY TRUST -- http://www.getty.edu 

MUSEUM DOMAIN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION (MUSEDOMA) --
http://www.musedoma.org 

INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS
(ICANN) -- http://www.icann.org 

MUSWEB LISTSERV ARCHIVES --
http://listserv.nrm.se/cgi-bin/wa?A0=musweb-l 

Joline Blais, Keith Frank, Jon Ippolito
FAIR E-TALES -- http://www.three.org 

THE ALTERNATIVE MUSEUM -- http://www.alternativemuseum.org/ 

RHIZOME ARTBASE -- http://www.rhizome.org/artbase 

OLIA LIALINA -- http://www.design.ru/olialia/ 

MEDIALESS ARCHIVE --
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/ 
byform/mailing-lists/av/1999/07/msg00014.html

CYBER-RIGHTS COALITION LETTER TO COMMERCE --
http://www.aclu.org/congress/l011601a.html 

POLITECH -- http://www.politechbot.com/ 
_______________________________________________________

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