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Marilyn Cade, a longtime member of the ICANN community.
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Marilyn, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. How did
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you first become involved with the organization?
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I answered my phone. My phone rang. I was on my way to
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the US Congress to a hearing, and I received a call from an
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AT&T executive who asked me what I knew about the new
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generic top level domain memorandum understanding, and
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why an organization that AT&T funded was behind moving
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the A root server to the United Nations International
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Telecommunications Union, Geneva, Switzerland. I too
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was amazed, but fortunately I knew who to call. So, I called
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ISOC and I learned that seven people had been meeting
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behind closed doors with I’m going to call it a scheme to
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privatize the functions that were being performed and
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coordinating the CCTLDs and the IANA function. I said,
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“Gee, this is kind of a surprise. No one knows anything
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about this.” “Well, we had this small working group and
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we handpicked and we’ve been meeting, and we’re going
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to put the ITU on the board and the World Intellectual
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Property Organization on the board and the European
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Commission on the board, and then four private sector
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people.” I’m like, “Uh, not so much.” This is not going
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to be – nobody from business is going to be happy.
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And Marilyn, this was 1998?
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This was 1997, late 1997. So, at the time, I worked
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for AT&T and I was from the computer industry side
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and the ISP side. And AT&T was on the board of several
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of the major high-tech associations. So, I convened
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an industry-wide meeting, including the Center for
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Democracy and Technology, to listen to this
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proposal. This group of seven people came in to
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town, to Washington, D.C., packed room. Only
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seated 65, standing room only, about 90 people, and
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they presented this idea that they were going to
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privatize the functions. They had a transparency. Now,
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these are the old days, right? Before PowerPoint. They
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had a transparency with an image of the International
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Telecommunications Union tower building, which is
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15 towers, 15 floors high, with a red arrow at the top,
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“Future Home of the A Root Server.” And at the bottom,
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the words “United Nations ITU, Geneva, Switzerland.”
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And the room went bizarre over this idea. Where did
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this come from? We don’t like the ITU. Who told you
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you could do this? And there were two Hill staff,
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congressional staff, in the room. And they made a
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phone call and invited the six men and one woman to
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a Hill hearing. So in two weeks, they came back for
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the hearing and they took their transparency.
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Chip Pickering was in the chair, and at the end of the
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hearing, it was kind of like, “So, you’re planning on
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moving the A root server, paid for by US money,
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citizen’s money, DARPA, NSF, to Geneva, Switzerland,
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to the ITU, a UN agency? Don’t think so.”
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Not a popular move?
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Not a popular move. And that was what led to my
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reaching out to, along with others from business.
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The business community was very, very concerned.
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And we reached out to the White House and to
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Mack McLarty, who was Chief of Staff to President Clinton,
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because the Hill hearing was so aggressively controversial.
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It was not going to be good for the internet. Remember
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that the internet was a baby then. Ira Magaziner
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was tasked – he was writing the ecommerce agenda
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for President Clinton, and he was tasked to kind of
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oversee looking into this, figuring it out. He reached
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out to Dr. Becky Burr, in the Department of Commerce.
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The Department of Commerce issued the green paper.
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There were over 500 comments. Most of the industry
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associations filed comments. I began coordinating
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a coalition of the high-tech sector, the business
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sector, including the US Chamber of Commerce,
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Oracle, all of the associations, CDT, the
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Center for Democracy and Technology, many of
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the law firms, to try to develop a business perspective
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and bring people up to speed. It was very complicated
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to explain the internet in the days when there were –
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when you realized that, in 1998, in September of 1998,
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when we actually launched ICANN, there were 147 million
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users worldwide. So we were dealing with something
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that was yet to be understood.
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Did people see, at that point, that very early stage – did
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they see, “Hey, in the future, this could be an economic bonanza?”
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The internet or the domain name system?
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The Internet.
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So email was very young, right? And I think companies
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were beginning to think, “Okay, there could be something
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to this.” AOL had three million subscribers. AT&T
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WorldNet had 1.3 million subscribers, home users.
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Businesses were beginning to say, “Wow, we could
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communicate more effectively, not send faxes,
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not make so many phone calls. We could begin to
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communicate more effectively with our widely
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distributed co-managers, salesforces, et cetera.” I think
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they were beginning to get the promise of it.
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So with that, Marilyn, did the business community
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see, as an extension of that, the importance of the DNS,
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or was that too in the weeds for them?
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Much too much in the weeds. Much too much in the weeds.
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You know, businesspeople didn’t know name Jon Postel.
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I knew the name Jon Postel, but it was because of my
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technical background. I knew the name Jon Postel,
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but the second phone call that I received – once again,
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I was headed to the congress for a hearing. It seemed
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to be where I spent my life at, right? And my phone
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rang, and it was Jon Postel. After this episode,
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where Jon had been supporting the idea of the
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GTLD MOU, or so it was alleged, there was a lot
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of controversy about this. My phone rang, and
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Jon had already retained Joe Simms as the outside
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legal adviser due to the lawsuit that arose when he
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rerouted the internet traffic. So, the phone rang,
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Jon Postel, “Like, I’ve got a computer scientist
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on my phone? Okay.” And Jon said, “Marilyn,
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this is Jon Postel. Mike Roberts and Joe Simms
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told me to call you.” And I sat down and talked to him
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for more than an hour. He’s not someone, Brad,
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that I would have – I was really annoyed at the
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GTLD MOU approach, this route-around, trying to
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put intergovernmental organizations on the board.
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But Jon and I talked through what his motivations
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were, and I agreed to help him. But I also told him,
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“It’s going to be done a different way. We cannot
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leave aside the business community or other governments
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or other users.” Remember, I worked for a global
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company, and it really mattered to the company I worked for.
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When you laid that out to him, you said – what
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came back at you from him?
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He said he didn’t understand Washington, he didn’t
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understand the politics. When he rerouted the
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traffic as a test, he did it on a weekend so it wouldn’t
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disrupt anything. But researchers work on weekends.
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So all the AT&T lab’s researchers were working all
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weekend, trying to fix what they thought was an error.
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So, this was an incredibly well-intentioned scientist
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who really believed that he was doing – and he did,
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by the way – so much good for the internet and for
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the world in the role he played. He didn’t get the
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hard edges of how the rest of the people in the world
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would view this transition or the fact that a small
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group of people were making a decision.
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Well, he’s a computer scientist, an engineer.
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But the good news is he was getting really great
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advice from Joe, but better than that, he was getting
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very good advice from Mike Roberts, who you know
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then became the first CEO and president, and from
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Larry Landweber. One of the things to understand
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is we should envision this period almost like a
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kaleidoscope. So, different people participated in
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different aspects, and as you know, when you turn
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the kaleidoscope, you get a different image. But you
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always get a colorful image, right? And over time,
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people became more interested. Hill hearings in
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Washington, D.C., congressional hearings, always
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generate press articles, et cetera. So, the issue
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began to get a lot of attention, and because the
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US Chamber was following it, it was also getting
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a lot of attention with the CEOs of major corporations.
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Was there a time when ICANN was magically
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accepted and they were thinking, “Okay, ICANN,
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we need this as regards to the DNS,” or is that
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overly simplistic and it was just a gradual campaign
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that eventually got traction?
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There were three competing proposals that were
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submitted in response to the white paper. Maybe
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I should talk about the international forum on the
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white paper for a bit as well.
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That was the one in Reston, correct?
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That was one – well, there were five. The
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international forum on the white paper actually
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held five meetings, and a voluntary group of people
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came together and cooperated in planning this
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consultation on the white paper. The white paper
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laid out certain ideas about what it would take to
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create what we then called NewCo. So, ICANN was
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called NewCo right up to the day of the first board
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meeting, and there’s an organization called CIX,
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the Commercial Internet Exchange. My boss was on
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the board of CIX. Because we couldn’t, as a company,
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spend the time doing the coordination with the
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other far-flung entities that were planning the
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Asia Pacific version, the African version, the European
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version, the Latin American version, we and others
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funded CIX to be the surrogate coordinator. So, the
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Reston meeting – and I was helping to plan it, but
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more in a background way, helping to fund the work
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that was being done. Other people, like Kathy Kleinman,
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was involved in this. There were many, many others
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that were also contributing to this planning. When we
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held – the day of the meeting in Reston, at 2:00 am
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in the morning, my phone rang. Is there a theme to
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this, phone calls? And Barbara Duly’s husband –
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Barbara was the executive director of CIX – had fallen
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into a coma, and Barbara was going to be the MC
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for the Reston international forum on the white paper.
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And so, the legal counsel, Plesser and I, put our clothes,
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our business clothes, in our cars, drove out and stayed
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with Barbara while her husband was air-vacced. And
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then, we went to the hotel and took over her function.
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So, we held this consultation which was really an
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interactive consultation. We took different segments
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of the white paper, people broke into groups,
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brainstormed, white boarded, came to agreement
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or not agreement. And that consultation process
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began to winnow out where there was agreement
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and where there was not agreement. After that,
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the five meetings took place. The Department of
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Commerce received those inputs, and after that, they
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made a call for proposals. The group I was working
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with, Larry and Mike and others, submitted a proposal.
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Two other groups submitted proposals. The Department
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of Commerce took aspects from each of the other two
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proposals and then announced that they were accepting
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the NewCo proposal from our group, with modifications.
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So at that point was when we began to try to convince
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congress, “We’re done here. We have a plan. We have
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a strategy.” Ira began engaging – he had been already,
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but he began engaging actively with Binghamton staff
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and the European Commission, who also had an
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ecommerce agenda. He began traveling to Australia,
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where he met with Paul Twomey, who was with the
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Australian government in a related [INAUDIBLE],
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to Japan and elsewhere, to try to build support.
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How tough was it – not just Ira’s mission to try and
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garner international support for the concept of ICANN.
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How tough was it on the Hill?
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It was tough, but we had a different environment
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then. We had a very seasoned group of senior Democratic
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senators and a very strong interest from the US Chamber
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of Commerce, which is very heavily, of course, influential
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with the Republicans. President Clinton had endorsement
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from over 500 CEOs of high tech companies, and so the
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message on the Hill was basically the high-tech sector,
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the business sector strongly supports this.
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How much were you met with this attitude of, “We
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invented it. Why give it away? We own it.”
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We got some of that. But remember, “we invented
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it” was actually not quite right.
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But it was the lay perception.
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It was the lay perception, but the other issue
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here is that people who were building it were the
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companies who were coming in and telling their
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elected members of congress, “This is a good thing.
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This is going to be good for us.” It was a miracle. We
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managed to get the privatization into President Clinton’s
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ecommerce strategy. Then we had Europe on board,
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because Binghamton was also interested in not being
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left behind. We had Australia, we had Japan, and
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those were big trading partners for US business.
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So, there was a little bit of skepticism, but it was
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more, “We’re going to watch,” and that’s why,
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Brad, there were so many continued oversight hearings.
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Remember, we just have oversight hearing after
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oversight. Every year, there were two or three –
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It was an annual event, almost.
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Yeah, or semi-annual.
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Marilyn, was there a time when you thought this
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model’s in danger? Something had transpired,
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whether it was a lack of money or whatever, where
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you thought, “Wow, ICANN’s in trouble?”
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Yeah, like the time that Ira called me and said,
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“We’re not launching on Monday, because we only
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have three out of the five required competitive
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registrars.” Yeah, I thought we were in trouble then.
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Gee, it’s noon on Friday. We’re launching on Monday.
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So, I dug up two more competitive registrars.
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Any other times that worried you?
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Yes. You know, there were a lot of people who felt
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that there was a lot of money to be made, that they
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could become the next NSI, and that they could exploit
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the domain name system, and that they could move
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themselves into positions of power. I will say that
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NSI was not the easiest monopoly to deal with, and
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it took them a long time and two or three changes
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in leadership to begin to appreciate the fact that
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a competitive environment was better for them as well.
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They also were extremely tough negotiators, and
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remember, we opened ICANN’s doors with Mike Roberts,
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four staff, his credit card, and a line of credit. So
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without the pro bono legal advice of Joe Simms,
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and then without the pro bono offer of the general
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counsel, we could never have made it, just never have made it.
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The white paper didn’t lay out where the funding was.
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That was kind of up to you guys. “Okay, we’ve got the
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broad outline here, but you guys have to figure out
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how to financially make this thing move.” What were
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those discussions like?
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It’s interesting, isn’t it, that I could spend an incredible
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amount of my time coordinating the industry, et cetera.
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When it came to actually writing a check to fund ICANN,
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it was really, really hard for businesses to figure out
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how to do that. And we weren’t alone in that. It was
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incredibly hard to figure out how to do that, and I think
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you’ve interviewed Mike Roberts. So, can you imagine
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how brave it was to open the doors, to convince staff
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to stay, and to say, “Somehow, we’re going to figure out
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the funding?” There was another time when I thought
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we could fail, and we were in Ghana. The registries
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and the registrars were delaying their payments of their
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fees. They were paying eight cents a domain name,
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and they were withholding the payment, paying late,
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refusing to pay. We were in real financial trouble,
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and this really brand-new guy to ICANN, named Ron Andra,
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who was just getting involved, turned to me and said –
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because I was kind of acting like his spirit guide. He
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turned to me and said, “Eight cents? Eight cents a
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domain name? That’s all they get?” And I said yes.
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He said, “Here,” and he sat down and wrote out a
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speech, and he compared the fee to how much he
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paid – and he called his wife and asked how much
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the taxes were on his telephone bill that month.
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He went to the microphone and said, “I propose that
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the community tell the board to raise the fee to
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25 cents a domain name.” Booing, booing, rounds
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of applause, and by the end of the meeting, the
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community had called for raising the fee for a
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domain name to 25 cents. So, we didn’t fix the funding
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problem, but we significantly softened it. And
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those were just individual acts of courage. There
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was no reason for Ron to do this. He was sitting
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in the audience and he just thought how unfair it was.
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What was your motivation at the time? I mean,
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tell me about the hard times. Obviously it sounds
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like a great deal of work. It also sounds like a
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little bit of fun. But what was the motivation? Was
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there a perception, “Hey, we’re creating something
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here that will reshape the world,” or did no one
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quite see it like that, and was it something else?
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President Clinton used to say, “Always be sure
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you stumble in the right direction.” And I think
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the community was kind of stumbling, whoever
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the community was. We kind of thought, “This could
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be good. It could be good for business, whatever it
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is. It could grow, it could be good for individual users.
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There’s something there. Do we actually know where
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it’s going to go? Do we really envision where the
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internet is going, the role it’s going to play? Not really.”
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But we did know that point to point communication,
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which is what we were dealing with then, high speed
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point to point, T1s, T3s, extremely expensive – we knew
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that could only work for the most advantaged corporations,
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huge. The single biggest item in most budgets of companies
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and associations was the communications bill, more than
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their data processing bills. Sometimes as much as their
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salaries. So we knew we had to break that, if we were
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ever really going to advance ecommerce, and ecommerce
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was the buzzword. Hey, it was on my business card. I was
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the Vice President of Ecommerce.
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So, people knew – they had a name for it before they
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could clearly define it, basically.
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They had this idea of what we now think about as
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real digitization. They had this like, “Ooh, we’re going
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to do everything online.” It was very catchy, you know?
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You went to thinktank speeches and business projections
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and this company vying with that company, Oracle talking
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about their ecommerce platform and IBM, et cetera. It
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was the business side of it was really motivated by where
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we could go with this and what we could build on top of it.
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How did you accomplish this sort of marriage between
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business, between the techno geeks, the Postels who
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are computer scientists, and the government, which
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wanted to protect its little thing here? How was there
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ever a meeting of the minds between those three entities?
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So I cheated. I was a big D, and for the audience, what
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that means is I was very actively involved in the Democratic
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party and had very strong personal Democratic ties.
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And the Democrats were in the house, the senate, and
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the White House. President Clinton was considered
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a very moderate Democrat, and of course had very
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strong Republican CEO support as well, in his election.
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And so, the marriage with government was not hard,
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really. There was Hill pressure, but we also had a very,
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very friendly Department of Commerce and Office of the
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President. And on the technocrats, gee, that’s what
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people like Mike Roberts are for, somebody who’s deeply
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from the technical community. Larry Landweber, people
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who had huge, huge respect, the real techno, geeky types
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out there. And you know, we didn’t actually have –
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we had a lot of thinktanks involved, and we had the
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Center for Democracy and Technology. But we didn’t
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actually have the kind of civil society individuals. We
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had a few academics, some of whom might like to had a few academics, some of whom might like to
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throw stones, just because that’s what they were
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doing when they were teaching. But it was a very much
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smaller community, with only 147 million users on the
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internet. It really was a much smaller community to try to convince.
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When you see – I’m interviewing you now. We’re in
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Johannesburg, so ICANN 59. When you see a meeting
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of this size and you think back to those roots, what
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goes through your head?
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I didn’t go to Singapore, where the bylaws were delivered.
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I sent someone else. So my first meeting was Berlin.
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And it was a real shock, because I went to the microphone
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to make a statement and there were two microphones.
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We could call it the good and the bad, or we could just
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call it the two different sides. And a certain party
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was hiring third parties to come and be surrogates for them.
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And so there, we were very – there was Steve Metalitz
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from the intellectual property side, and there was me
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and there was Jerry Burman, from CDT. And I’m at the
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microphone, and everybody else, Brad, from the business
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side, the IPC side, the ISPs, they’re all sitting in the back
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of the room. I go to the microphone and make a statement,
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and there’s 25 people at the other microphone. They
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start booing me, right? And I turned around and look at
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the guys, so to speak, in the back of the room, and then
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I walk back there and I say, “Here’s the deal. When one
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of us makes a positive statement, we applaud, and when
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they make a statement, we boo. We’re going to shut
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this down now.” So when I look at how civil we’ve become,
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it’s a miracle to me, right? We don’t boo each other anymore.
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We’re much more civil. There’s so many more of us,
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and the magic of this is how we have changed the face of
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the participants in ICANN, to be more reflective of the
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3.7 billion users on the internet. We used to be so white,
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whenever we came to a meeting.
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It was also male. What was it like to be a woman among
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all these business leaders at that time, and particularly
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the technical world, the computer scientists?
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First of all, I have a fairly strong technical background,
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and I represented AT&T Labs, so I had a lot of coaching
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behind me, right?
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Were you accepted?
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I was more accepted than most of the other females,
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I would say, because I did have a fairly strong technical
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background, and because I always do deep research.
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And I think also, I believe in effecting change. And I
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never felt non-accepted by the technical community,
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but I think a lot of it, Brad, was that I had a lot of
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technical coaches. And I knew enough to keep them close.
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Marilyn, you were involved in the earliest stages.
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When you look back at those early stages of ICANN
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and you look ahead to the future, what concerns you
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when you’re looking through the lens of history?
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What concerns you about the future of ICANN?
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So there’s an RFC called RFC 1591 that Jon Postel
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wrote, and those are written and published by the
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Internet Engineering Taskforce. And it says that
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you do all that you do for the good of the global
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internet. What concerns me is that we are a
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quasi-standards development body and policy
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development body, and we need to help the
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contracted parties understand that they can do
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well, but also do good, that the DNS is something
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like a spectrum. It can’t collide, and that they
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are significantly advantaged by their relationship
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with ICANN. ISPs and data center providers and others
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have to get a license or an authorization, country
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by country, in order to do business. It’s very expensive.
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Sometimes the delay is three months to two years,
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to get the license. They have to hire a local counsel,
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in most cases, and if our registries and registrars
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had to do that on a country by country basis, we
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would not have a global presence for the registries
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and registrars. The thing that concerns me right
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now is that we have so many new contracted
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parties who didn’t come up through the experience.
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They kind of parachuted in. They thought this was
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a great business opportunity, and they don’t
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understand the value equation of ICANN to them.
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The historical foundation would help them.
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When we set ICANN up, we looked thoroughly
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at the model to prevent anti-trust issues, to
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protect the not for profit status of ICANN. When
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I say we, I mean the private sector attorneys, not
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just the government, but those of us who were
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engaged, we asked our inside counsel and our
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outside counsel. We decided to base ICANN, Inc.
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in California instead of Delaware. I mean, these
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were thoughtful decisions, and remember, there
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was only one registry at the time, and only five competitive
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registrars. So, understanding this protective role that ICANN
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provides, the legacy GTLDs, I believe, understand it. But
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many of the new registries don’t. They don’t, and they
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don’t understand that if ICANN loses its not for profit
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status, or if there are anti-trust implications, if we lose
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the balance with being an open, transparent standards
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coordination with the contracted parties, there could be
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significant financial risk, or even they could find themselves
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being investigated perhaps by competition authorities.
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And that not understanding that risk, that’s what scares me.
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Talk to me about the human interaction. Have you made
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friends at ICANN over the years?
483
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If we would take a popularity vote, I think I’d win. I think
484
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it is important for all of us to make a contribution, and
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sometimes that means delivering a tough message. But
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I hope it always means delivering the tough message with
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care, with professionalism, and being – you can disagree
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without being disagreeable.
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Respectful.
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And I think that, in particular, one thing that really
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excites me, Brad, is the new energy, the enthusiasm coming
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to us from the developing countries, the interest in being
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engaged, the willingness to devote the time that a next
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gen or a fellow spends in trying to learn about ICANN.
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I’m very excited about new participants in not just the
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GNSO, but in the CCNSO, in the GAC. The GAC has
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grown and is maturing, and it’s just wow. We have
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created an international organization in less than 20 years,
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almost 20 years, that is stable, respected, reliable, and trusted.
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That’s a great point to end on. Marilyn Cade, longtime
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member of the ICANN community. Thank you so much.
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My pleasure.
