Re: The museum and heritage sectors

[Cary Karp <ck@nrm.se>]

Quoting Michael Dillon:

> However this would still not handle the museum situation and similar ones.
> So I think there needs to be a .CAT TLD (from category) that holds only
> second level domains that are delegated to mini-registries who use those 
> domains only to register third level domains. Thus the museum could get
> together and agree on an SLD .MUS.CAT or .MUSEUM.CAT and then set up a
> registry which they run themselves for their own members and associates.

This would put individual museums on a third level at
orgname.mus.cat. We can provide the equivalent service without in
any way encumbering the IAHC process. There are already several
second level domains within the museum community that provide
general registry services. These lack both the neutral character
of a top level domain created for the present purpose and the
obvious value of providing as specific a right end to an
organization's domain designation as possible. Despite
difficulties in gaining community acceptance of pre-existing
second-level hosts, if the IAHC should decide not to expand the
iTLD structure in a finely particulated manner I'd suspect that
many of the smaller candidate sectors would just as soon serve
their own purposes within the current TLD structure. 


Cary Karp               Department of Information Technology
mailto:ck@nrm.se        Swedish Museum of Natural History
http://ck.nrm.se/       Svante Arrheniusv. 3
Phone: +46 8 666 4055   Box 50007
Fax:   +46 8 666 4235   104 05 Stockholm, Sweden