 Esther Dyson, ICANN's first board chair from 1998 to 2000, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Esther, how would you characterize the U.S. government's relationship with ICANN during those early years? They were trying really hard to do the right thing, which was not to control it. That was the whole point, that there should be this self-generating, I like to call it, immaculate conception body that came out of the Internet to manage and govern the Internet's own resources but with a very light hand. At the same time, this was something that they de facto controlled and they had to give it to somebody and sort of like handing somebody a baby and maybe you should tell them the baby's name and where it came from. So they were trying to be non-directive but at the same time helpful. And you said the intent was that they have a light touch. Did they in fact have a light touch? Yeah, there are a lot of other people who think not and think they were sleazily interfering and manipulating and they were there. So in my particular experience, I think it was Ira who first asked me, would I be interested in doing this? It was one of these very delicate, suppose somebody created such a body and suppose just hypothetically you were asked to serve on it. Would you be interested in doing that? And I said, yeah, sure. Without quite realizing how important it would be. And then a month or two later I got a call from somebody from IBM as I recall who told me that they had created this thing and that a lawyer called Joe Sims would be in touch if I was interested. So I wrote back to our magazine and said, is this for real or is this some kind of joke? Again, they were trying not to be, here's a letter from some U.S. committee but just like if this thing got created would you sit on the board? And of course they had to do that much, they had to do something to make it happen even though they didn't want to be the ones making it happen. So Esther, the intent on the part of the government was to create this thing and then pull back? Right, and they were working with the Europeans who were, it just wasn't in their nature. The Europeans were much more de-registered in the way the European board members got selected as I understand was somewhat different and they were much more, quote, you know, kind of regular, influential people. And then I have no idea who brought Jim Ryan and Ira I'm sure would know. But certainly no one was whispering in my ear telling me, and now you've got to do, now this, now that. So there was no pressure? No, again I don't know, Joe Sims must have had many chaps. And Joe Sims was an attorney who was doing, if I remember correctly, some pro bono work in the formation of this, is that correct? Yeah, and again I don't remember, the details are over time, I'm sure it helped their practice. We didn't really have the budget. So in theory we would, and over time of course we did get a cut of every domain name that was registered but at this point. Between the time of the formation and when that happened where did the money come from? Well we had some small initial budget and of course we were trying to get an agreement with network solutions to pay us, and I don't recall but you know there's a big difference between a tax or a commission or a fee or whatever and of course they resisted and they resisted having anybody else come into the business and so forth. I mean the USG is an interesting outfit and it does this overseas as well. It's best, it fosters liberty and freedom and democracy even if it doesn't control it. And it's sort of hard to control something to create something that is supposed to be uncontrolled if you like. So how do you go in and interfere with somebody's elections to help them have free elections? There's always this kind of inherent contradiction. In the context of ICANN's relationship with Washington you have said ICANN was an extremely powerful vacuum. Elaborate on that, what do you mean by that? It was a vacuum that protected if you like this function of managing the domain name system and it kept it from people leaning in and interfering. And the danger of course was everyone wanted to rush in and fill the vacuum with their own particular interests and the USG was trying to keep the vacuum secure and sealed. And what you're telling me is largely they were affected? Largely they were. Yeah, I mean in the end again you had a lot of money flowing through some of which stayed with ICANN and much of which went out into the pockets of the people whose businesses was because there was an artificial shortage of domain names or TLDs. But without the artificial shortage you would have had a mess. And so the whole thing is somewhat arbitrary and that's why we regulate monopolies. And so the goal of ICANN was to regulate it but at the same time it was in a sense the beneficiary of the thing it was regulating. But as I said earlier the really important thing was governments couldn't use the domain name system. And there, I mean certainly governments can censor things without using the domain name system but by and large we tried to keep it from being too much something that was controlled by governments and used as a weapon against people they didn't like. You've been quoted as saying that Ira Magazine or the Clinton aid was an idealist quote unquote. What do you mean by that? He believed basically what I just told you I believe which is that this thing should be controlled but not by special interests but by the public interest and it should be protected from special interests trying to twist it or control it to their own ends. Did you guys assign credibility? It sounds like you did. Did you guys assign credibility to the Clinton administration when it basically said we will take hands off. I mean did they have to prove to you that we're not going to try and control this. We want to give it birth and let it grow on its own. I certainly believed them. I mean that doesn't mean everybody in Congress agreed. There were a lot of people again in Congress who thought my God the internet we own it and we're giving it away to these dirty foreigners. So it's not that all of the USG agreed but the bits that we worked with were genuinely trying to do what I think is the right thing which is why I signed up for it in the first place. You mentioned Congress in December of 2011 you testified before as a senate committee and you said it is not the role of Congress to tell ICANN what to do quote unquote. Was that the way Congress saw it? No or at least certainly many parts of the Congress did not. I would say probably half to two thirds of Congress had no idea what the fuss was about but of those who cared some thought geez why are we giving this thing away and then certain other set thought wow you know I love America. We really believe in freedom. We believe in the internet as a worldwide gift to the world and we should let it be worldwide and free and we're American and God bless and that was pretty nice. Let me get your reaction to this. I've sat in on a number of hearings congressional hearings over the years where ICANN has testified. I had a personal sense that there was always a great deal of confusion on the hill about ICANN's mission in its structure. Do you share that perception or is that inaccurate on my part? Confusion may be both like if you don't pay any attention to something are you confused or just completely not interested but it ranged from real insight to confusion to indifference to is that like a bottling company or something? In your dealings with the hill was it difficult I mean when you testified or when you had interaction with people in either the Senate or on House side was it difficult to get through to them what the mission was and how the independence of ICANN was so important? Well I would say it was difficult because it certainly didn't really get through. On the other hand personally we were just trying to get this one or two things done and we were very lucky because the person Network Solutions sent kind of dug his own hole poured water and jumped in so we won that particular battle and I wouldn't say it was because we enlightened Congress it was just because we won that particular hearing. We were practical we weren't trying to educate all of Congress we were just trying to get enough of what we needed to build the government structure for ICANN so it could operate effectively. Esther even after you left your role as chair you were an active part of the ICANN community over the years when you look back as someone who has been involved in the community what do you see as the most problematic periods in the relationship between ICANN and the USG? It wasn't so much the relationship between ICANN and the USG it was the relationship between the different parts of the USG that wanted to keep it wanted to end the contract and send ICANN on its path to freedom and I haven't been paying that much attention but I did go to hear a speech that Ted Cruz gave just because I thought it would be interesting and it was kind of you could talk about Obamacare and Obaminet he used it as a punching bowl to express his distaste for Obama so it ended up being a political football in a sense between people who hated the Obama administration which really had very little to do with ICANN in the first place other than to keep doing this thing of setting it free I mean I thought it was a little premature because we hadn't gotten quite the guarantees but the transition was premature yeah but in the end it was the right way to go the problematic stuff was between different parts of the government who used it as a political football rather than actually looking at the substantive issues around what it does and what it should be doing from your point of observation was there a clear and agreeable consensus with the various executive entities in the executive branch of the government between commerce for example and DOD and so on was there a common we're on the same page in terms of what this organization ought to be? more or less I mean there were lots of internal battles around this thing or that thing but the gulf between different parts of the US was much smaller than the gulf between say the registries and the governments or something like that your opinion when I asked you to give me a broad consensus you seem to have a pretty positive sentiment regarding an overall sort of view of the US government and ICANN's relationship Vint Cerf whom you know the way he characterized the relationship is problematic and not very supportive sounds like you don't at all agree with that well so I was not chairman while Vint was and he may have asked for things you know for help that he didn't get so I'm seeing it from a much I'm seeing it from the two years where I was most actively involved in a couple of years after that where they created the thing Senate's on its way had a contract that had there was some notion of how the contract should end if certain conditions were met versus hey I'm hurting here because this is going on or that is going on can't you help me and I really liked the USG sort of saying no we're not supposed to help you because you're supposed to create yourself and yes it caused some of those financial problems I mentioned but fundamentally in a meta way they had the right attitude towards it how important was magazine or personally toward the development of ICANN both the model and getting it off the ground he's your key overall designer and Joe Sims is probably your key construction agent or something two of the main players that made it happen would it have happened had magazine or because you had mentioned earlier it was a sort of natural evolution of something that needed to occur would it have occurred if there had been somebody other than magazine or without Ira it probably would not have been as smooth it might have taken a few more years and being a lot messier had our not kind of taken the initiative I think you would have it probably would have ended up in the arms of the ITU or somebody like that and being extremely bureaucratic and slow and I think in a sense Ira made something happen that might have evolved differently without him Interesting Esther Dyson I can't share from 1998 to 2000 thank you very much for taking the time Thank you That was fun