Re: How to pay $47 for a copy of RFC 793

John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com> Thu, 12 May 2011 14:42 UTC

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Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 10:41:58 -0400
From: John C Klensin <john-ietf@jck.com>
To: Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>, Masataka Ohta <mohta@necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp>
Subject: Re: How to pay $47 for a copy of RFC 793
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--On Wednesday, May 11, 2011 16:43 -0400 Steven Bellovin
<smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:

>> It is a lot more time (and money) saving to search free
>> versions before entering transactions to purchase them than
>> to rely blindly on PubMed, IEEE, ACM, google scholar etc.
> 
> Unfortunately, the IEEE has tightened its copyright policy; see
> http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights
> /paperversionpolicy.html for details.

Steve,

It seems to me that this policy applies to documents published
by the IEEE and that it has no direct effect on IETF (or RFC
Editor)-published documents.  Interestingly, it is also very
similar to a generally-understood historical version of the
policy wrt RFCs at least before the IETF community started
practicing "amateur lawyer":  I-Ds and other prepublication
documents basically belong to the authors and they can do with
them as they like (the IETF Trust is now insisting on attaching
copyright notices to I-Ds; let's not start another debate about
the legitimacy of that practice).  By contrast, RFCs involve
some value-added by the RFC Editor, copyright assertions have
been made for a decade or two, and "we" have tried to control
derivative publications.  

The main difference is also familiar: the IETF wants to limit
reproduction permission for published versions (presumably to
continue to make money on them to offset other expenses) while
we permit unlimited distribution and reproduction without
special permission as long as the documents are intact or meet
specific other criteria.   A second difference is that we've
never asked folks to go find online versions of I-Ds and update
them to point explicitly to the successor RFCs.  I have no idea
how one actually does that or enforces it but, in principle, it
is an idea we might actually find it beneficial to consider.
Finally, the IEEE insists on formal copyright transfer at a
well-defined point (and, as far as I know, always has).  "We"
don't think we need that.

best,
   john