Summary
The Museum Domain Management Association (MuseDoma) is the non-profit organization responsible for formulating the policies for the .museum top-level domain (TLD). MuseDoma serves in this role under an October 2001 agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that delegates to MuseDoma the responsibility, within a broadly defined scope, for providing the forum in which the international museum community develops policies to be followed in this special-purpose TLD. Key among the topics within MuseDoma's responsibility is the establishment of "naming conventions" for .museum.
Since it was entered into the DNS nearly two years ago, the .museum TLD zone file has included a wildcard A record, implemented according to conditions in the ICANN-MuseDoma agreement. The immediate purpose of this was to familiarize users with .museum's highly structured three-level namespace and enhance its utility via an ordered index of all names in the TLD. This index is operated on a non-profit basis by MuseDoma and has been continually enhanced to make the namespace more accessible to users. A test-bed precursor of the index was implemented during MuseDoma's consultative policy-development process and was received enthusiastically from the outset by the museum community, which actively supported the further development of the index.
In mid-September 2003, wildcard A records were entered into the .com and .net zone files. This prompted many expressions of concern about the effects that these changes might have on the security and stability of the Internet's operation, as well as the necessity of modification to a variety of systems to accommodate the .com and .net wildcard characteristics. In the ensuing discussions, some have spoken in undifferentiated terms about the use of wildcards in any TLD. The purpose of the present statement is to call attention to key differences in the purposes that the wildcards serve, their benefits and drawbacks, and the processes by which they are introduced.
The .museum wildcard was developed through a consultative process that generated strong support within the museum community. The provisions of the ICANN-MuseDoma agreement on which it is based were posted for public commentary six weeks before the Agreement was entered, with no Internet community comment on the point. The TLD policies that include the wildcard are fully disclosed to every prospective .museum name holder, each of which also agrees to adhere to those policies as part of the registration process.
A sponsored TLD, by definition, is operated for the benefit of a clearly bounded community according to community decisions made through the Sponsor. The museum community determined at the beginning to employ a highly structured three-level namespace, which is made more accessible to users by the .museum index and its associated wildcard. Similar conditions are not relevant to the operation of unrestricted, unsponsored TLDs.
There are also differences of scale and timing. The .museum TLD is small and has had the wildcard since its inception. Approximately 3,000 museum names are currently registered, with a maximum anticipated population one order of magnitude larger (which will be about 1,000th the size of .com). The potential for disruption to applications written in reliance on the lack of wildcards is clearly smaller than in any case where wildcards are introduced into a significantly larger TLD, especially where that introduction occurs after a protracted period of operation without wildcards. Finally, different considerations pertain when the purpose served by a wildcard is restricted to the shared internal objectives of a non-profit community, than is the case when revenue generation is a primary motivating force.
Although the .museum wildcard has broad support in the museum community and there have been no reported technical problems resulting from its use during the nearly two years of its operation, MuseDoma recognizes its responsibility for developing .museum policies in a manner that avoids technically disruptive effect on the Internet. In this regard, MuseDoma values ICANN's investigation of the technical concerns, including those raised by the Internet Architecture Board and the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee. That investigation will undoubtedly provide valuable input to the museum community's assessment of the present benefits and drawbacks of the .museum wildcard, and its development of policies regarding the future of that wildcard.
Process used in establishing the .museum wildcard
During consultations leading up to the launch of the .museum TLD, the museum community displayed keen interest in the establishment of a TLD-wide directory service, operated on a non-profit basis, that would assist users in becoming familiar with and navigating this small TLD's structured namespace. The rationale for this structure was to provide means for labeling resources on the basis of disciplinary focus or physical location. The application of descriptive nomenclatural hierarchies is fundamental to the museum profession and that community's sentiment strongly supported creation of a similar mechanism to order the .museum TLD namespace.
To promote user familiarity with the intricate and unfamiliar structure of this namespace, under MuseDoma's auspices the museum community began the development of a public index of the namespace. To ensure that users benefited from this resource, the community sought a mechanism to direct users requesting unassigned .museum domains to the index. This seemed to present minimal potential for upsetting user expectations, since any deliberate use of the character string ".museum" indicates an attempt at locating a resource provided by a .museum name holder and direction to the .museum index would therefore invariably be consistent with user interests. (The likelihood of a typing error accidentally resulting in the entry of a URL ending with ".museum" is not taken as a serious concern.)
The .museum index was initially conceived as a convenient way for prospective name holders to see the second-level labels already being used in the generic vocabulary. The availability of the index avoided the coincidental appearance of generic terms only slightly differentiated from each other, and fostered convergence on a consensus-based shared descriptive vocabulary. The index at its current state of evolution is located at http://index.museum/.
In addition to its utility as a support device in the formation of names, the index assists the user community in locating resources in .museum. A user with a general interest in museums with a given area of specialization or at a particular location is well served by the availability of listings, for example, of all participating art museums or all museums in a specified city. The index provides a single point of entry into this descriptive hierarchy and enables the direct addressing of, for example, http://art.museum/. The primary current purpose of the wildcard is to enhance the utility of the controlled .museum namespace by supporting community expectations of being able to access the .museum index directly on its second level. When used as a URL, a two-label domain name matching an entry in the index leads immediately to the desired access point; any other two-label name takes the user to the top of the index hierarchy.
Based on the support in the museum community, experts in the Internet technical community were consulted and concrete guidance was provided about essential technical requirements. MuseDoma then requested that its agreement with ICANN authorize inclusion of a wildcard in the .museum zone for the limited purpose of enhancing the effectiveness of the index as a finding aid. In accord with the clear opinion of the community for which the .museum TLD was being created, such a provision was included the ICANN-MuseDoma agreement, specifying the inclusion of the wildcard in a clearly defined and narrowly focused configuration. The wildcard has been included in the .museum zone since the TLD was established, with MuseDoma ensuring that the providers of technical registry services for .museum maintain the required configuration.
The proposed provision of the ICANN-MuseDoma agreement was posted for general Internet community comment at the end of August 2001. No remarks about any potential jeopardy to the stability of the Internet were submitted to the ICANN forum for public commentary, and the provision was included as posted. The wildcard facility has been demonstrated in every one of the numerous presentations of .museum that have since been made to the museum community, which continues to regard its availability as one of the more useful and compelling features of their structured namespace. All prospective .museum domain-name holders indicate their acceptance of the .museum usage policies and naming conventions prior to registering their names. The user community has long since demonstrated expectation of being able to avail itself of the benefits of the index and the wildcard feature.
Recent controversy concerning .com and .net TLD wildcards
On 15 September 2003, wildcard A records were introduced in the zone files for.com and .net. This triggered debate about numerous aspects of that action with particular concern being expressed about the disruption of applications that have relied on the former configuration of the .com and .net zones. The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) has published a commentary describing several technical issues caused by the changed configuration, and stating the guideline: "If you want to use wildcards in your zone and understand the risks, go ahead, but only do so with the informed consent of the entities that are delegated within your zone."
The ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SECSAC) also published a paper concerning the introduction of .com and .net wildcards, noting that the change "has caused an escalating chain reaction of measures and countermeasures that contribute to further instability." SECSAC has launched a review of the technical implications of the changes to the operation of the .com and .net TLDs, and has scheduled a meeting on 7 October 2003 to gather input regarding them.
The present statement is presented as a support document for the SECSAC review. MuseDoma believes that the circumstances of .museum highlight the need for differentiating between TLDs when assessing the effect of including wildcards in them. The manner in which the .museum wildcard was introduced and has subsequently been operated are fully consistent with the IAB guideline (quoted above). The consequences of the "measures and countermeasures" noted by SECSAC are of particular relevance to the effective operation of the .museum wildcard and MuseDoma wishes to indicate its interest in assisting in the examination of these secondary effects.
Key differences between the .museum wildcard and those in .com and .net
Although some have drawn parallels between the .museum wildcard with those in .com and .net, in fact the two situations are very different. Expanding on the points indicated above:
(a) The .museum wildcard was developed in extensive consultation with the museum community, through an organization to which explicit responsibility for that process had been delegated;
(b) There was full public notice of the implementation of the wildcard both prior to its authorization in the .museum Sponsorship Agreement between ICANN and MuseDoma, and as a component of the .museum operational policies to which each prospective registrant agrees during the application process;
(c) The prior notice of the wildcard made to, and consented by, all registrants fully complies with the IAB guideline;
(d) The .museum wildcard meets a special need of that TLD that is directly related to the detailed structure of its naming conventions;
(e) The .museum index facility supported by the wildcard is operated as a public service, without expectation of it generating additional revenue;
(f) There is no accumulation of TLD-specific applications relying on an established practice of no wildcards;
(g) The .museum TLD is four orders of magnitude smaller than .com and any comparison of the disruptive potential for wildcard implementation in them must be similarly weighted;
(h) During the almost two years in which a wildcard A record has been resolving in the .museum zone file, there have been no complaints about its having any undesired secondary effects.
The conditions underlying the .museum wildcard lack counterpart in any domain that is not restricted to a clearly bounded community. Any discussion of extensibility of the .museum wildcard application must take this into account. Although reasonable precedent might be seen for similar implementations in other bounded domains operated by agencies originating and residing within the community encompassed by that domain, any discussion of grounds for the inclusion of a wildcard in an unrestricted gTLD needs to be conducted from its own first principles.
Future of the .museum wildcard
In its deliberations since 2001, the museum community has enthusiastically endorsed the use of the .museum wildcard to enhance the accessibility of a public index of the TLD namespace. The benefits of the index were viewed as significantly overriding any drawbacks that might result from the use of a wildcard to direct attention to the index. The wildcard implementation strictly adheres to the clearly defined and narrowly focused configuration developed in consultation with technical experts. MuseDoma has ensured further adherence to this through its supervision of the provider of .museum registry services, CORE.
Despite its broad support of the .museum wildcard, the museum community recognizes its responsibility for developing .museum policies in a manner that avoids technically disruptive effect on other parts of the Internet. The use of the .museum wildcard is most effective as a user-familiarization tool in the TLD's initial stages and, as the .museum TLD grows in acceptance, it is appropriate periodically to review the use of the wildcard. MuseDoma expects the ongoing investigation by the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee of the technical concerns raised by wildcards to illuminate the museum community's assessment of the present benefits and drawbacks of the .museum wildcard, and its development of policies regarding the future of that wildcard. MuseDoma looks forward to the insights this process will provide and to continuing to work with ICANN in ensuring that the Internet's infrastructure continues to be operated stably, securely, and in the interest of the global community.
6 October 2003 - 1500 UTC