Re: legal consultation (was List moderator action)

[Joel Halpern <[e-mail]>]

It seems to me that an email discussing a draft where the draft has a 
no-derivative-works clause falls under one of two cases, neither of 
which require the email to have a no-derivative-works clause.  (Note: I 
am not a lawyer.  THis is only my understanding.  But then, almost 
everyone else in this discussion is also not a lawyer.)

1) The email discusses the ideas from the draft without quoting it.  As 
we are dealing with copyright, such an email is not a derivative work.  
(This also applies if there are minimal quotes that are understood to 
vall under fair use.  Whether they do or not is a minefield of its own.)

2) The email does quote from the draft in such a way that a reasonable 
person could conclude that it is not fair use.  In that case.  That 
appears to be a violation of the underlying no-derivative-works clause, 
and thus is against the rules.  Note that even if the author posted such 
an email (meaning it was legal for them), anyone else quoting the email 
to comment on it would be in serious danger of creating a derivative work.

Put differently, emails claiming no-derivative work about an underlying 
draft with such a clause have no value to the discussion, are usually 
not needed to have appropriate discussion, and create a legal minefield.

Yours,

Joel

On 5/6/2026 4:48 PM, Rob Sayre wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, May 6, 2026 at 1:40 PM Simon Josefsson <[e-mail]> 
> wrote:
>
>     Rob Sayre <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>     > Hi, I wrote it up:
>     >
>     > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-sayre-gendispatch-derivative/
>
>     Thanks for writing that.
>
>     I don't think it make sense to permit I-D's to prohibit derivative
>     works
>     and at the same time forbid presentation or e-mail posts about the I-D
>     to use the same clause.  It seems hard to discuss or present a
>     no-derivative I-D in a presentation that can be derived by others and
>     re-used in other's Contributions.  The policy should be consistent
>     regardless of the form of contribution, which I believe it
>     currently is.
>
>
> That issue is what's being addressed.
>
>   "A working group can discuss the Contribution with the
>    aim to decide if it should become a working group document, even
>    though the right to produce derivative works or to publish the
>    Contribution as an RFC has not yet been granted"
>
> Further including such no-derivatives clauses in correspondence about 
> a Contribution is just annoying/disruptive.
>
> thanks,
> Rob