Biography | Göran Marby — In Room SD-226, Four Months into the Job, He Defended the IANA Handover

The hearing that tested him was not in Los Angeles.

It was in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, room SD-226, at 10 a.m. on 14 September 2016.

Four months after his first official day as ICANN president, Marby sat before the Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts.

The title on the notice was Protecting Internet Freedom: Implications of Ending U.S. Oversight of the Internet.

What was actually on the table was the last stretch of the IANA stewardship transition: the plan for the U.S. Department of Commerce to let its contract over the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions expire on 30 September 2016.

Marby appeared with Lawrence Strickling of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

The written testimony he filed that day identified him as president and chief executive of a California public-benefit nonprofit.

He told the subcommittee, in substance, that the naming functions ICANN performs are not a content switch, and that delaying the handover would give governments that wanted a different model an opening.

The Congressional Record's daily digest for the week of 13 September lists the hearing in SD-226, the standard Judiciary room on the first floor of Dirksen, across Constitution Avenue from the Capitol.

Sixteen days later, on 1 October 2016, the Commerce Department's contract role ended and the multi-stakeholder accountability design took its place.

The building is still the white marble block on C Street Northeast.

Room 226 is inside it.

A visitor cannot walk into a 2016 hearing, but the corridor and the façade are the same ones he entered that Wednesday morning.

Photo: Architect of the Capitol, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons