Volume: I
Pages: 251
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
*
INTERNET CORPORATION for *
*
ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS *
*
FACT-FINDING MISSION *
*
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
DATE: November 14, 1998
TIME: 9:14 a.m.
HELD AT: Cambridge Marriott
Two Cambridge Center
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
O'BRIEN & LEVINE
COURT REPORTING SERVICES
1287 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02134
Telephone (617) 254-2909
2
A P P E A R A N C E S
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD:
Hans Kraaijgnbrink
Eugenio Triana
Esther Dyson
Greg Crew
George Conrades
Frank Fitzsimmons
Michael Roberts
Linda Wilson
ALSO PRESENT
Jonathan Zittrain, Moderator
Charles Nesson
Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, Senior Assistant
to the President and CEO
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
3
1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2
3 MR. ZITTRAIN: Good morning. My name
4 is Jonathan Zittrain. Along with Charlie Nesson,
5 I run the Berkman Center for Internet Society at
6 Harvard Law School. We're helping ICANN facility
7 with their meeting here today, and we'll start
8 with an administrative announcement. You'll see
9 on the agendas provided in the convenient keepsake
10 briefing booklets that came with your
11 registrations, at 9:45, there's an open comment
12 period with two-minute slots.
13 And as you'll see, there are two
14 microphones strategically positioned in the middle
15 of the room. To prevent a mobbing of the mike or
16 an unjust result where whoever gets there first
17 actually gets there first, we have a box about to
18 go around. Into the box, you can place -- you may
19 have in your book , or if you don't have in your
20 book or you don't have a book, it will be outside,
21 a little card that says, "Yes, I want to speak
22 during the two-minute comment period." You can
23 drop that card, with your name on it, preferably,
24 into the box. The box -- you can also put money
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
4
1 into the box, but that's not required; there's no
2 relationship with whether you'll be able to speak.
3 You put the card into the box, the box works its
4 way up to the front of the room. The designated
5 federal marshal then draws names out of the box.
6 And in fact, I think we have people on deck, so
7 it's not like the Price is Right; you'll know a
8 little bit ahead of time when your time at the mic
9 is to come. You can then come to the mic and
10 speak. It seemed a more equitable way than just
11 having the kind of whoever-can-elbow-their-way-
12 there-first method of mic talking.
13 So with that said, the box should be
14 going around. Please put that in. The scribe
15 will put this instruction up so it need not be
16 repeated multiple times. And with that, let me
17 turn it over to Ms. Esther Dyson. Thank you.
18 MS. DYSON: Good morning. This is --
19 first of all, I'd like to welcome all of you here
20 to the first of many public open meetings with the
21 Board of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for
22 Assigned Names and Numbers. And I'm going to give
23 you a little outline of what we're trying to
24 accomplish today, then I'm going to talk a little
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
5
1 bit about where ICANN is now and what we are going
2 to be trying to do over the next few weeks, few
3 months and year or two.
4 Then the Board, with my gentle
5 moderation, will introduce themselves to you. The
6 goal, in part, is for you to see who these people
7 are, why we were -- why we believe we were picked,
8 what we bring to the party, what we see as the
9 challenges we've got here.
10 Then Charlie Nesson, who's going to be
11 moderating the rest of the day, is going to
12 explain in some more detail the specifics of how
13 it's going to work, and he will lead you through
14 the rest of the agenda, the questions and the
15 issues we're going to consider.
16 There are really three goals here for
17 this day. The first is, indeed, to hear -- we
18 have a lot of questions we need to decide. We're
19 going to face a lot of specific issues, including
20 both decisions we have to make and decisions about
21 the very structure of the Board and the
22 organization going forward. And we're here not to
23 judge and not to make decisions, but to collect
24 input in a way that's more useful than just
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
6
1 comments. What we're going to try and do is
2 actually foster some discussion.
3 In some sense, almost any question is
4 legitimate. What do we need to constrain our
5 powers, is a legitimate question. What are the
6 costs of those mechanisms for constraining our
7 powers, is another legitimate question.
8 There are a lot of trade-offs here, and
9 one problem with general comments is, frequently
10 they deal with only one-sided, each question.
11 What we're going to try and do is bring up both
12 sides or as many sides as there may be of many of
13 these questions regarding, specifically, our
14 membership structure, the structure and
15 qualifications and the procedures for doing the
16 supporting organizations and these accountability
17 mechanisms that we're also (inaudible) inputs.
18 We will, most of us Board, stay here
19 after 4:00 p.m., but there's a hard close at 4:00
20 so that some people who need to go to Monterey can
21 leave here on time. But we wanted to meet with
22 you in this open, public way and get to talk to
23 you, hear you, have you ask us questions in the
24 corridors during the breaks, whatever. We're all
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
7
1 going to have to work together, and so I think it
2 would be really helpful for us to know one another
3 as individuals.
4 Now, let me talk a little bit -- and
5 this section here, for what it's worth, is
6 probably the only one that's going to be straight
7 talking by one person. We're going to be fairly
8 quickly into interaction. I'm going to, in some
9 sense, do my self-introduction now. I won't be
10 part of the introduction of the Board later.
11 I came to this as someone who had --
12 obviously being aware that there was a lot of
13 commotion going on about the demanding question, I
14 didn't think of -- to be honest, I wasn't thinking
15 very hard about protocols or assigned numbers. I
16 even wrote about it in my book and decided that I
17 -- there was no way I could figure out what was
18 really happening, there was no way that anything I
19 wrote would actually stand up in the four months
20 it took for the book to be printed, so I kind of
21 glossed over it lightly.
22 Then this summer, there was a
23 conference in Aspen -- it was not the Aspen
24 Institute, I think it was part of the Computer
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
8
1 Foundation -- said, well, you know, they'll need a
2 board for this thing. If someone asks you to do
3 that, would you want to do it? And I said, well,
4 obviously I'd need to know more of what was
5 involved, but sure, it sounds like something that
6 would be fun, I could learn a lot. And that was
7 that. I kept reading stuff about this in the
8 press, wondered if I was going to get this
9 marvelous call.
10 Then I got an E-mail from somebody
11 called Joe Sims, who I'd never heard of. And I
12 thought, well, I should be polite and answer this,
13 but maybe it's a hoax. So I sent an E-mail to
14 Roger Cacheti saying somebody called Joe Sims is
15 sending me this E-mail; is it for real? And it
16 turned out it was, so I sent the E-mail back and
17 said yes, I'd be very interested in -- I don't
18 know whether I said yes right away or tell me
19 more, but anyway, ultimately I said yes.
20 So what you -- what we are, in some
21 sense, is people primarily picked to be
22 interested, with not enough history to know
23 enough, unfortunately, but with not enough history
24 to be biased or perceived to be captured in some
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
9
1 sense, coming in here, trying to learn as much as
2 we can quickly so that we can act as quickly as
3 possible, but not hastily. And as I said earlier,
4 this is really an opportunity for us to learn from
5 you, unfiltered, except by other people. I mean,
6 the goal is to have this kind of cross-current of
7 discussion rather than a series of comments and
8 see you, among yourselves, consider some of these
9 questions that we face.
10 Now, ICANN is in a position of being
11 almost ready to get its authority from the United
12 States government, but it's going to have to get
13 its legitimacy from a much broader population.
14 It's going to have to get its legitimacy just the
15 way the original IANA and the original group
16 server system did, by people using it -- thank
17 you. And if anybody can't hear in the back, raise
18 your hand. Sorry about this. It's going to have
19 to get its legitimacy by people acknowledging its
20 legitimacy. We're well aware of that, and we're
21 trying to construct a system that will do this.
22 One thing I bring to this particular
23 party is a lot of history in Russian and central
24 and eastern Europe. They have gone through, as
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
10
1 you know, a long and, in some cases, painful
2 process of privatization. In some sense, this is
3 what we need to do with ICANN. We need to take a
4 system that ran on procedures that were fairly
5 predictable -- if you had a question or a dispute,
6 you went to John Costello and it got resolved, and
7 everybody acknowledged that authority and it
8 worked fine. But we're now moving to a system
9 that needs to be larger, it needs to scale up, it
10 needs to be broader-based, it needs to be
11 international and it needs to be transparent and
12 seen to be fair.
13 But the question is, how do you make
14 that transition from one set of rules and
15 procedures where people had stakes in a system
16 that they felt they could rely on to a new set of
17 rules and procedures not everybody inevitably is
18 going to be entirely happy with the consequences.
19 But we want to do it in a way that is fair and
20 that is seen to be fair so that, again, we will
21 win legitimacy as well as just authority to do
22 this.
23 Now, it reminds me of when I first went
24 to Russia. It was May of 1989. Everybody was
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
11
1 extremely happy. It was clear that within a year,
2 there would be democracy and a free market and
3 prosperity in Russia. And one Russian said to me,
4 "This is great. Our government is going to set
5 free market prices just like yours." And we are
6 not in a situation where the government is going
7 to set, so to speak, legitimacy. We need to
8 create a system, just like a market, that creates
9 legitimacy. And that is -- we would like a market
10 for ideas, a market for how this should be
11 structured and a bottom-up consensus to what are
12 appropriate rules for this organization to have.
13 So we're now right at the beginning,
14 and we are going to be working hard not to
15 construct a system. That's what the Soviets did;
16 they constructed a system that worked for a while,
17 but it was not adaptive and it fell apart. And
18 what we're trying to do is build something that's
19 much more organic, that has within it learning
20 mechanisms, that has feedback groups, that has
21 checks and balances, it's organic. And that is
22 what we would like to do with you here today.
23 Now, I'd like to ask two questions of
24 the audience, and then I'm going to do the Board's
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
12
1 self-introduction. And the first is simply, how
2 many of you come from Boston?
3 (Responses)
4 MS. DYSON: Okay. How many from the
5 U.S.?
6 (Responses)
7 MS. DYSON: And how many came from
8 outside the U.S., including Canada, which we
9 acknowledge is a sovereign territory?
10 (Responses)
11 MS. DYSON: One thing I really want to
12 do here today, we have a serious task, we want to
13 come to a consensus, but I also hope we can have
14 fun. You know, this should not be either boring
15 or painful. It should be passionate and intense.
16 But what we're trying to do here is actually
17 exciting. We're trying to build something new
18 that will then grow beyond us. This initial Board
19 especially, we, by fiat, have to resign when our
20 work is done. We have to create something that
21 will not be based on our own personalities, but
22 that will have within it the checks and balances,
23 responsiveness, the decision-making mechanisms
24 that will enable it to work effectively after we
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
13
1 are gone.
2 And so the second question is, how many
3 of you are basically expecting to see a broadly-
4 acknowledged consensus here today?
5 (Responses)
6 MS. DYSON: How many of you are
7 hopeful, but sort of tentative or dubious, but you
8 would really like to see this thing work out?
9 (Responses)
10 MS. DYSON: Okay, well, that's really
11 encouraging. And how many of you just think the
12 thing as an out-and-out fraud and you're here to
13 try and stop it?
14 AUDIENCE: Can you separate those two
15 questions, please?
16 MS. DYSON: Thank you. Okay. Let's
17 start with the Board introduction. Now, the way I
18 want to do this is ask each of the Board members
19 to spend about two to three minutes, you know,
20 including why you're here, what motivated you to
21 do this, what are you trying to get out of this
22 day. And let's start with Eugenio Triana, please.
23 MR. TRIANA: Thank you, yes, good
24 morning, my name is Eugenio Triana. I am an
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
14
1 industrial engineer and currently a consultant on
2 telecommunication regulations and Internet
3 property rights, licensing, etcetera. I've been
4 engaged for my life in the industry and
5 telecommunications and some short time in the
6 Spanish government. The last position I had was
7 in the European Commission in Brussels as deputy
8 director general in charge of telecommunication
9 policies. My name is on the round table on
10 Internet users in Europe and many other worldwide
11 users of the Internet, but the most I contribute
12 to this splendid product in (inaudible) and I am
13 very happy with the transcriptions permitting us
14 to read the Board of Directors speeches. I am
15 considered -- people consider myself as a moderate
16 person. Maybe that is one of the reasons to the
17 inclusion of my name. I was elected to reach the
18 consensus, to (inaudible) the consensus, you can
19 say, and that is the way we are considered now, I
20 consider. On the other hand, of course I am
21 contributing, I have contributed to the
22 understanding between Europe and United States to
23 have a vision in relation to the -- to understand
24 it is necessary to create a U.S. incorporated
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
15
1 entity. Among the Europeans, as you know, at the
2 beginning there was some research about that, and
3 to understand the necessary transitional period to
4 go from the current situation to the normal one
5 open to competition. And to be asked onto this
6 Board for me has been a very, very honor to be
7 proposed by Joe Sims. Thank you.
8 MS. DYSON: Do you feel you represent
9 any particular group or interest or position other
10 than being here on the Board?
11 MR. TRIANA: I am representing, I
12 think, the people (inaudible) the Internet
13 consensus. I have been, as I mentioned before,
14 proposed by the (inaudible) participant bureau,
15 but I been considered, I believe, it's a personal
16 opinion, a (inaudible) person in the dialogue
17 between both sides of the Atlantic in looking for
18 this consensus. That's . . .
19 MS. DYSON: Great. I'm going to skip
20 Mike Roberts, because I asked him to go last and
21 talk a little bit about the current operations of
22 IANA/ICANN and give you sort of a factual update
23 on some of that. So Greg Crew from Australia.
24 MR. CREW: Good morning, thanks,
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
16
1 Esther. My background, like Eugenio's, is in
2 telecommunications. I've worked in Australia,
3 Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. There's a brief
4 C.V. in the papers. I'd just make a correction in
5 there, an error which I had not fixed; I was not
6 chief executive officer of Communications in the
7 U.K., I was, in fact, chief operating officer.
8 I retired to go back home in 1995,
9 about three years ago, and since then I've taken
10 up a number of Board appointments, including the
11 chairmanship of the Australian Communications
12 Industry Board, which is an industry self-
13 regulating body with a membership representative
14 of all sectors of the industry, including the
15 supply-and-demand side. We have representatives
16 on that Board and within the organization as well
17 as carriers, providers, industry associations and
18 so-forth. And it's a large ground base membership
19 and a structure that seems to be working pretty
20 well.
21 I think it was in the course of that
22 that a representative of the Australian office --
23 National Office of Information and Economy, which
24 the Australian government has set up to promote
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
17
1 the use of the Internet for commercial purposes in
2 Australia, came to see me to find out how we
3 operated the situation. And out of that interview
4 came a suggestion if I would consider serving on
5 the Board of the body (inaudible) to self-regulate
6 -- for self-regulation on the Internet. I guess
7 why did I say yes? My career started around about
8 the time that Sputnik went up, which is 35 years,
9 and I experienced continuous change in the
10 telecommunications industry, technological,
11 regulatory, and it's -- I found it interesting to
12 study what is probably the forefront of the
13 change, even though I retired. So that's my
14 reason for being here.
15 MS. DYSON: Thank you. George
16 Conrades. And apparently the volume isn't as loud
17 as it should be, so talk right into your mic. I
18 think you had -- is it nice and clear in the back
19 there, Molly?
20 MS. HOUWELING: Yes.
21 MS. DYSON: Great, thank you.
22 MR. CONRADES: Good morning, everybody.
23 Thank you very much for coming. I'm currently a
24 partner with Polaris Venture Partners here in
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
18
1 Boston, and we invest in early-stage IP and
2 medical technologies, but primarily there -- the
3 investments are with Internet start-ups. I come
4 to the Board by way of thirty-seven years in the
5 IP industry, beginning in 1961 with IBM when that
6 company was only about a billion and a half
7 dollars in revenue, a long way from present both
8 domestically and internationally.
9 In 1994, I became the CEO of Boll,
10 Beranick and Newman (phonetic), a company some of
11 you may recognize as having been at the beginning
12 of the Internet by helping to build the Arpanet
13 (phonetic) in 1969 and, in 1972, sending the first
14 E-mail and having the "at" sign put in all of our
15 E-mail addresses by a person who's still on the
16 staff at BBN.
17 And through that, I got to know the
18 wonderful culture and nature of the Inlex, have
19 been responsible, both within BBN and certainly
20 within the community, for the dramatic phenomenon
21 of the Internet.
22 In 1997, we were acquired by GTE, and I
23 spent a year with that organization, helping to
24 devise a strategy for offering integrated
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
19
1 telecommunications services on an IP base.
2 I got to the ICANN Board by essentially
3 minding my own business. I was riding along in my
4 automobile one day when the phone went off, and
5 John Patrick from the local Internet project and
6 IBM, who knew me from IBM, called and asked if I
7 would consider being on this board. He was
8 calling on behalf of Joe Sims, who was putting a
9 board together to be submitted to the U.S.
10 government. And John felt that my background in
11 both IBM and with ISP and with a (inaudible), but
12 also no longer being part of those firms, would be
13 helpful on the board and said that he thought the
14 job would be quite difficult, intellectually
15 stimulating and highly frustrating. I thought,
16 well, two out of three isn't bad.
17 So I felt that because of my concern,
18 which was really borne through the BBN experience,
19 for the health and viability of the Internet, I
20 would volunteer to join the Board, and here we
21 are.
22 MS. DYSON: Thank you. Let me also
23 just note that one thing you can do during the
24 open comment period is ask questions of particular
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
20
1 Board members or all of us, and we would welcome
2 that. Frank Fitzsimmons.
3 MR. FITZSIMMONS: Good morning,
4 everybody, thanks for coming. I'm currently VP of
5 Gold Marketing for Dunn and Bradstreet with two
6 specific responsibilities in strategy development
7 and in strategy and limitation (inaudible) basis.
8 As you can read in the background material, most
9 of my career was spent on the finance planning and
10 business development side, division financial
11 officer and North American planning officer.
12 I then shifted over the last six years
13 to be involved in new business development and new
14 business operations, operating (inaudible) start-
15 up teams to explore new revenue opportunities.
16 And that included, as the Internet came along,
17 included the Internet, our Web strategy, our Web
18 business, as well as a participation of Dunn and
19 Bradstreet in electronic commerce.
20 And it's through the involvement in
21 those business activities that we got involved in
22 a lot of the issues that are under discussion
23 today and have been under discussion, in fact,
24 over the last two years; specifically, data
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
21
1 privacy and data protection. Dunn and Bradstreet
2 has a very long history in being concerned and
3 very responsible in those areas. We got involved
4 in a trust model and what it means to be on the
5 Web and identifying your partners or your partners
6 on the other end of that line. We got involved in
7 trademark discussions as well as -- we were
8 somewhere between a spectator and a participant in
9 the discussions over the last few years.
10 And it's in that -- in those activities
11 and those discussions that was the reason that I
12 got the call to participate in this Board.
13 Actually, I got two calls. The first time -- the
14 first time, I deferred participation. I delegated
15 it to somebody on my staff who had actually
16 participated in the detail discussion for the last
17 few years. The second call I got -- and both
18 calls were from Gene Shentrel from our Public
19 Affairs Division. The second call I got indicated
20 that that person might not be senior enough and
21 that, in fact, (inaudible) the Board that you see
22 here today. And, in fact, that second call also
23 indicated that this initiative had a real chance
24 of succeeding and hopefully gaining consensus, in
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
22
1 part because of the people that were being put on
2 the Board. And being a fan of -- or having become
3 a fan of transitions and change over the last five
4 to seven years, I couldn't resist the challenge.
5 I guess to answer a question that
6 Esther asked earlier, do I represent any
7 particular group, I think I can fairly well
8 represent the commercial interests on the Internet
9 today, having developed some Web-based businesses
10 and watched it grow and having interest in the
11 stability and growth as a business tool, so . . .
12 MS. DYSON: Thanks. I want to clear
13 the air on one question which is being posed to me
14 is, there is a contract between Dunn and
15 Bradstreet and Network Solutions, and what is it,
16 how significant is it?
17 MR. FITZSIMMONS: Okay. The
18 contract -- you can see the press release on both
19 the Network Solutions site as well as the D&B
20 site, and it's, quite simply, a hypertext link
21 agreement whereby, when you register for a domain
22 name at the Network Solutions site, you can also
23 click over to the D&B site and register for a
24 Dunn's number. And a Dunn's number is nothing
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
23
1 more than a simple, meaningless, in some sense,
2 identification of a business at a particular
3 location. And to the extent that it has become,
4 in some industries and in some initiatives, as a
5 standard for identifying a business, the two
6 companies saw a lot of promise in letting
7 customers register for each at the same time.
8 MS. DYSON: So are Dunn and
9 Bradstreet's profits dependent on this particular
10 contract?
11 MR. FITZSIMMONS: Well, I would say
12 that that's highly unlikely. Well, I would defer
13 that question -- actually, Dunn and Bradstreet
14 does not retain any revenue from the assignment of
15 a Dunn's number on an individual basis, so the
16 profit has not come into the picture yet.
17 MS. DYSON: Well, what's the point of
18 doing it, then?
19 MR. FITZSIMMONS: The point of doing it
20 is that to the extent that there were two -- a
21 number and a name that identified a business,
22 either an electronic page or on the Web, that
23 people ought to have the ability to register for
24 both at the same time.
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
24
1 MS. DYSON: Okay. Let me -- the
2 question here has to do with conflict of interest.
3 If NSI suddenly says we don't want to do this any
4 more, would it matter?
5 MR. FITZSIMMONS: Quite frankly, no.
6 MS. DYSON: Okay.
7 MR. FITZSIMMONS: I think that they
8 would have to almost speak for them, but I'm
9 pretty sure that their business is not dependent
10 on this either.
11 MS. DYSON: Dunn, do you want to say
12 just one --
13 DUNN: I don't think it's a big deal.
14 MS. DYSON: Dunn says, "I don't think
15 it's a big deal." You can go to the Web site and
16 sort of see what this is, but I really did want to
17 deal with this so that people would know, number
18 one, we're willing to answer questions like this
19 and to try and let people know who we are. Okay,
20 Mr. Hans Kraaijgnbrink.
21 MR. KRAAIJGNBRINK: Good morning. I'm
22 Hans Kraaijgnbrink and I'm from the Netherlands.
23 Currently I'm chairman of the executive board of
24 the European Telephones Operator Association, and
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
25
1 my salary is paid by E.T.O.A., which is the
2 privatized telephone operator -- main telephone
3 operator in the Netherlands. I was asked by a
4 representative of the European Commission, if the
5 ICANN Board came into existence, I was willing to
6 accept nomination. At first I was very hesitant
7 because I said I know nothing of the Internet.
8 Well, that's very good, they'd say. I know
9 nothing about the discussion which is going on;
10 well, that's very good. And the reason for
11 selecting me was that I could share experience
12 with other international organizations. By
13 chairing the executive board of an association
14 which has forty-four members from thirty-one
15 different European countries, you have to deal
16 with quite a number of different approaches to
17 solving problems, to solving discussions and
18 inputting into the policy with the European
19 Commission.
20 I was trained as an electrical engineer
21 at (inaudible) University, where I graduated in
22 1966, not 1996 as I've read, because that would be
23 a bit strange. I've worked in several fields.
24 I've been in research and development, I've been
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
26
1 in public affairs, and I also worked in government
2 concerned with regulation and with law making.
3 And as a trained electrical engineer, I would say
4 I'm a fresh-water lawyer as well, and I've
5 discovered that lawyers and engineers have a lot
6 in common, at least in the way of thinking an
7 analyzing problems.
8 I entered ICANN with a very open mind,
9 and I was amazed about the intensity and the items
10 which are in discussion. And to explain to you my
11 position in this, I feel that like IANA was, ICANN
12 should be an enabler for the ongoing development
13 of the Internet. I certainly will not be -- let
14 me be forced in a position where the Board will
15 dictate how the Internet will go, nor, I believe,
16 as a Board member, I want to be dictated how the
17 Internet should go. I believe that gives an
18 impression of my position as a European. I'm
19 sometimes a little bit surprised by the intensity
20 of the American debate, but I believe that we can
21 learn a lot from each other. Thank you.
22 MS. DYSON: Thank you. Let me just
23 explain about the other three Board members who
24 are not here and then have Michael Roberts be both
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
27
1 a Board member and the interim president. Linda
2 Wilson, who is president of Radcliffe, is actually
3 officiating at two other conferences here in
4 Cambridge this morning and will show up around
5 noon and will also welcome herself, so to speak.
6 Jim Murai unfortunately couldn't be here.
7 Likewise Geraldine Capdebos from Bool and Friends
8 (phonetic). Just as you will eventually see a
9 transcript, so will they. I'm sure we'll tell
10 them what happened and so forth, but the -- they
11 both send their apologies, and Linda Wilson will
12 apologize personally. So Mike Roberts.
13 MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Esther. I, too,
14 got involved through Joe Sims. In my case, it was
15 in September, and Joe called me to ask me if I
16 would consider being a member and start-up CEO of
17 what has become ICANN. My credits for that
18 include thirty years the computing and networking
19 and telecommunications business and higher
20 education. A considerable part of that in recent
21 years has been -- has involved policy issues, and
22 I'm certainly acquainted with (inaudible) audience
23 personally.
24 The -- one of the bases for the phone
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
28
1 call or the tentativeness of it was that they were
2 initiating some board who would go to work
3 immediately because the government's deadline is
4 approaching, and we did not wish to be a candidate
5 for the permanent job because there wasn't any
6 possibility, with the end-of-September deadline
7 approaching, to do a reputable, respectable and
8 open search. So I -- since, among other things, I
9 was available in theory because I'd retired last
10 year, or attempted to retire, the Board asked me
11 to meet with them the first time I think it
12 assembled face-to-face, which was October 25th in
13 New York City. And we had a discussion about my
14 qualifications and my interest, and after a
15 private session, they asked me if I would take the
16 job and I said I would. And they said, "Well, you
17 just went to work."
18 And so this is day six of work of week
19 three of the corporate existence of ICANN. I have
20 -- because of John's untimely passing, there has
21 been considerably worry in the community that the
22 continuity of the work that he did and the
23 services that ICANN provides to the community
24 continue without interruption. And it's been
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
29
1 right at the top of my list to make sure that that
2 happens. I'm responsible now for a small company
3 with a staff of five people, including myself. My
4 vice president is Ceta (phonetic) Winslow, who is
5 here with us. Ceta, why don't you stand up and
6 let everybody see you in the back here. She's
7 responsible for -- she was John's invaluable
8 assistant over the course of the summer in working
9 through the process, and she's responsible for the
10 day-to-day activities in Marina Del Ray where our
11 administrative and technical headquarters are.
12 And she's backed up by an extremely loyal and
13 dedicated staff there composed of Joyce Reynolds
14 and John Shelby and Suzanne Wall.
15 We obviously can't continue to run this
16 company with five people, several of whom are
17 temporary. And so one of my first priorities is
18 finding several permanent staff members, and we'll
19 be putting some announcements about that on the --
20 and recruiting for that on the ICANN, which will
21 go up at the beginning of next week.
22 I'd also like to say that there's an
23 extremely long list, as almost everybody in the
24 room is familiar with, an extremely long to-do
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
30
1 list for ICANN. The federal government has not
2 addressed the backlog of policy work for quite a
3 long time. Many of you have, I think, the
4 perception you've suffered through a two-year
5 government white -- green paper, white paper
6 process. And so that has now sort of been
7 deposited in our lap to address. And we certainly
8 think you can tell from my fellow Board members
9 here that we are as anxious as you are to get on
10 with the job of doing that and working with the
11 community to sort out the pieces, establish
12 consensus, use the open notice and comment
13 provisions of the by-laws so that everybody has a
14 chance to be heard on these matters and to, in
15 effect, get some things done here.
16 The -- my personal priorities working
17 with the Board at the present time include
18 completing the negotiation of the three major
19 agreements that will have immediate contractual
20 force for the company. One of those is obviously
21 with the U.S. government, and we've had several
22 discussions through counsel over the last several
23 weeks, and we will -- that obviously will
24 continue.
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
31
1 There is also -- there are several
2 references to what has become ICANN in the
3 agreement between the government, the U.S.
4 government and Network Solutions that reference
5 Newco, and that has turned out to be us, and we
6 clearly have some aggressive timetables in that
7 agreement, those of you who are familiar with
8 that. I believe that material is in your briefing
9 book, if you're interested in referencing that.
10 And of course the third agreement is to
11 take what we've stepped in and did without
12 crossing T's and dotting I's with respect to the
13 staff in (inaudible), and that is to complete an
14 agreement with the University of Southern
15 California for some of our administrative staff
16 arrangements.
17 Beyond that, I think it's certainly
18 apparent that the company needs the supporting
19 organizations in place and functioning. They're
20 critical to the work that we have to do. I've
21 already been spending quite a bit of time working
22 with people who are interested in being proposed
23 as support organizations, and I won't say any more
24 about that now, because we have a session on that,
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
32
1 but it's right at the top of the list of my
2 problems.
3 Obviously we have to have a business
4 and financial plan for the company. I've had a
5 lot of experience doing that. Ceta is working on
6 that, I'm working on that. I'm sure (inaudible)
7 consulted about that, because the funds for ICANN
8 are going to come from the community. There's
9 lots of creative energy out there about how we
10 might -- how you might help us support ourselves,
11 and we're looking forward to seeing that come
12 forward when we notice and comment our revenue and
13 financial and budget plans.
14 I'd also like to say that it is
15 essential that the constituencies of ICANN on a
16 worldwide basis feel that they are genuinely
17 consulted. I'm going to Europe tomorrow, and the
18 Board intends to select a meeting date and a
19 meeting site in Asia before they leave Boston
20 today. I've been invited to South American and to
21 Africa right after the first of the year, and I'll
22 see what can be done about that.
23 I guess in closing, Esther very
24 eloquently, I think, indicated to you all how
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
33
1 essential it is that we do this together, and I
2 feel that I'm part of a team that can help make
3 that happen. Esther asked us to say, well, why
4 are you willing to do this. A couple of reasons.
5 First of all, the community in which I spent most
6 of my professional career feels very strongly
7 about getting it done, and so, you know, you can't
8 live in that community for thirty years without
9 absorbing some of it, and so I have that in my
10 background.
11 Secondly, I feel that for all of the
12 deficiencies in it, the process that the
13 government went through to create the white paper
14 and consensus that was in the white paper
15 (inaudible) community to make self-government
16 work. I personally very strongly believe in that,
17 and so I want to try to help, along with you, help
18 this grand experiment to succeed. And as you're
19 undoubtedly aware, a lot of folks are very
20 skeptical about whether self-regulation of these
21 functions in the Internet can succeed. I'm an
22 optimist and I believe it can, and I look forward
23 to working with you to make it happen.
24 MS. DYSON: Thanks. We're running out
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
34
1 of time, so just -- could you take one or two
2 minutes, just -- unlike the rest of us, you do
3 have a little more history here. Just how did you
4 come to this?
5 MR. ROBERTS: My -- well, I obviously
6 participated in the summer process as a consultant
7 to several clients, and I suppose I should say
8 that in your answer to the question, are you
9 willing to do anything else while you do this,
10 first of all, that's not a very sensible question
11 because this already an eighty-hour-a-week job.
12 But to be direct about it, (inaudible) consultant
13 clients with their agreements with me in
14 (inaudible) CEO of the company. I think that my
15 explanation of my invitation to do this and my
16 conversation with the Board (inaudible). Thank
17 you.
18 MS. DYSON: Okay. All right. Charlie,
19 do you want to come up and explain how we're going
20 to run the rest of the day?
21 MR. FENELLO: There's a question here.
22 Speak up.
23 MR. FELD: Just one quick question,
24 front microphone. What would be your --
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
35
1 MS. DYSON: You can't be recorded if
2 you don't use the mic, and you have to say who you
3 are. We -- go ahead, Charlie. We really want to
4 hear people, but we . . .
5 MR. FENELLO: Hello? It's Howard Feld,
6 and I believe it's religious reasons that he can't
7 use the microphone.
8 MS. DYSON: Oh, okay.
9 MR. FENELLO: Could the Board please
10 address, how many members were directly or
11 indirectly contacted by Joe Sims for their current
12 position?
13 MS. DYSON: All of us, I believe.
14 Maybe not for you.
15 MR. KRAAIJGNBRINK: No, I was not and
16 Eugenio Triana was not.
17 MS. DYSON: But then you were contacted
18 about the meeting. Yeah, Greg?
19 MR. CREW: Just to clarify, the only
20 contact I had with Joe was a formal question, was
21 I willing to stand. That was the only contact.
22 MR. CONRADES: And I was not formally
23 contacted from Joe. He did not initiate the call
24 to me. The call came through our public affairs
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
36
1 office, I think two calls came through our public
2 affairs office, and then I spoke to Joe.
3 MS. DYSON: Okay.
4 MR. NESSON: Might I suggest that Joe
5 is in the room, and at a meeting yesterday, he
6 made a statement which I thought was exceedingly
7 clarifying. And with your permission, Esther, I'd
8 love to invite Joe just to make a statement.
9 MS. DYSON: Okay, here he comes. And
10 then, you know, honestly . . .
11 MR. SIMS: The -- there is posted, I
12 believe, on the IANA Web site or it will be
13 shortly a document which consists of answers to
14 questions that were posed to me by the Science
15 Committee, one of which was, how was this Board
16 selected. So you can read that in more detail,
17 but I will try to repeat, to the best of my
18 ability, what it says in there, which is, in fact,
19 that throughout the summer, John Costello
20 solicited suggestions for people who might serve
21 on the Board. He got suggestions from a very
22 large number of people, ranging from the technical
23 community to the business community to people
24 representing the European Commission and other
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
37
1 governments.
2 The -- when we came down to the final
3 process of determining who would be invited to
4 serve on the Board, that decision was made by
5 John. He asked me to contact the people that he
6 thought would be the most appropriate people to
7 serve on the Board. I contacted, I believe, each
8 of the people who are now members of the Board,
9 all of whom, I believe, had been contacted by
10 somebody prior to that time to ask them whether
11 they were interested and would it be okay to
12 submit their names along with probably several
13 hundred other folks. And I sent an E-mail, as I
14 recall, asking would they be willing to serve on
15 this Board. And of the people that I formally
16 asked to serve on this Board, we asked ten people,
17 and nine of them said yes. We did not take all
18 the suggestions from the European Commission or
19 other governments, but we did find some of them to
20 be perfectly appropriate and valuable suggestions,
21 and some of those people now sit on the Board. So
22 that's -- those are the facts.
23 MS. DYSON: Thank you. Let me just say
24 one more thing. You know, there are lots of --
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
38
1 how does one put it? -- complaints, how did we
2 come to be here. If we had created an electorate
3 to elect us, the question would be, well, who
4 created this electorate? Was that legitimate?
5 You know, at some point what we're dealing with is
6 a given reality, and we're trying to take that
7 reality, go through this one to two-year
8 transition process, again, have you change from
9 one system over to another. And so what we're
10 trying to do is work with you going forward rather
11 than going backwards to get to the point where, in
12 some sense, we can open up a transparent cocoon
13 and let a butterfly out and all of us disappear.
14 It is our job to be legitimate from where we are
15 rather than go over how we happen to be here.
16 You know, if we don't do our job right,
17 you should be complaining about that. But we're
18 here, we hope to get our authority from the U.S.
19 government, and then we hope to use it wisely and
20 in consultation with you to build the final
21 structure.
22 MR. NESSON: Thank you, Jay, for
23 helping us with that moment of awkwardness there.
24 Appreciate it. First, just on behalf of myself
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
39
1 and the Berkman Center and Harvard and MIT and
2 Cambridge --
3 MS. DYSON: And the Marriott.
4 MR. NESSON: -- and the Marriott, let
5 me welcome you here. It's a pleasure and an honor
6 to have this meeting. The Berkman Center
7 basically believes that the approach to solving
8 problems is to create a process which, by its very
9 nature of deliberation, produces solution and that
10 my only function right now is to introduce my
11 Berkman Center process team to you and turn things
12 over. So if I could just have -- Jonathan
13 Zittrain, you know. Molly Shaffer Van Houweling
14 is -- will be helping just a little later on and
15 is just a face for everything that we've been
16 doing. Then Evelyn here as scribe. Andrew
17 McLaughlin as scribe's assistant. Wendy Seltzer
18 as -- what's your -- empress of Cyberspace --
19 no, something like that. Andrew McGilvry is Alex
20 Macgillivray, right here. Andrew, I still
21 claim you Andrew Shapiro from last year. And with
22 that, let me just say, our job here is to
23 facilitate this meeting, and I'd like to turn it
24 over to John Zittrain.
O'BRIEN & LEVINE COURT REPORTING SERVICES
For additional information, please contact:
Wendy Seltzer, Ben Edelman, Alexander Macgillivray, and Antoun Nabhan.
Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School