Mary L Kish, 7/5/2008 · 0 comments
"As a private-public partnership, ICANN has dedicated itself to preserving the operational stability of the Internet, and the Registrar Data Escrow program goes a long way toward this goal" (Doyle, M. Digital Authority, Iss. 4, p. 9).
“I think the most interesting thing about ICANN is the way it works,” says Michael Zupke ’00. “ICANN is more than just the nonprofit corporation and its employees. It is a community of volunteer stakeholders who develop new policies through a bottom-up, consensus building process. My role is to help facilitate policy development and implement 'consensus policies' that have been adopted by the ICANN Board of Directors. Ten years ago, ICANN's bottom-up policy development process might have been called 'the ICANN experiment.' Today, it is 'the ICANN model.'”
A current CMD student reading Zupke’s description of his workplace would probably remark, “How CMD is that!” It's a commonly heard exclamation when students have an internship or work in an organization that fits their idea of a "cool place to be."
That is exactly the way Zupke feels about ICANN, the nonprofit corporation founded in 1998 to oversee numerous domain name system (DNS) tasks previously performed by the U.S. government among others. ICANN is international in scope, providing technical coordination for the DNS including all domain names ending in .com, .net, .org and .mobi—that's more than 90 million domain names—and, supporting billions of interactions every day. In short, ICANN ensures security and stability of the Internet’s domain name system.
While majoring in the CMD program (then called OCLD), Zupke minored in writing and was involved in activities familiar to many CMD students today: the student government association (SGA), President’s Host, and ICTV. He was also the student representative to the Campus-wide Information Systems Policy Board, a foreshadowing of things to come.
However, Zupke's first stop after graduation was Minnesota Law School where he amply demonstrated leadership as the student director of the Wagner Labor & Employment Law Moot Court and president of the Lambda Law Student Association. He volunteered as a street law instructor at high schools for at-risk youth and, as a tenant advocate. Then, as a student attorney in the Civil Practice Clinic, he engaged in a novel civil rights case against the State of Minnesota on behalf of a transgender veteran, which they won, requiring the State to pay for her gender reassignment surgery.
Zupke added to his legal experience with an internship at the U.S. Attorney's office and various law clerk positions. He also worked in arbitration and helped resolve internet domain name trademark disputes, “which is how ICANN eventually found me,” he explains.
Zupke graduated with a law degree in 2003 and was admitted to practice in both Minnesota and Massachusetts. He started his own business, inPrivity, to provide outsourced legal research and writing to busy attorneys. In the summer of 2005, he was invited to apply for the ICANN job that he currently holds.
“I began at ICANN doing largely compliance enforcement work, but my work has shifted over time toward promotion of business continuity by domain name registrars and toward protection of domain name registrants,” says Zupke. “I've written a handful of public reports, pursuant to ICANN's former memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Dept of Commerce, related to registrar compliance with ICANN consensus policies, and have participated as a speaker at a couple 'domainer' conferences.”
Zupke also has conducted a couple of workshops at ICANN, including one in which the subject was “What happens when a registrar ceases business operations?” The workshop resulted in considerable community discussion which was fed into a process document that is currently posted for additional community comment and will ultimately be presented to the ICANN Board of Directors for possible adoption. That's the bottom-up process.
The Registrar Data Escrow (RDE) program landed him a cover story in Digital Authority magazine. “It was pretty much my baby from beginning to end,” he says with a little paternal pride. “In consultation with a stakeholder working group, I drafted the technical specifications for the program, wrote and ran the RFP for data escrow providers, and conducted the negotiations with the bidders, including the drafting of much of the RDE agreements. I am now overseeing the enrollment of all registrars, and when we're done with registrar on-boarding, the result will be greater overall security and stability of the internet's domain name system and enhanced protection of domain name registrants.”
Considering his interesting experiences—as a lawyer, an entrepreneur, an internet policy-maker—Zupke has been asked to teach a mini-course in the future so he can share with current CMD students a real-world “cool place to be.”
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