RE: [Trustees] ANNOUNCEMENT: The IETF Trustees invite your reviewand comments on a proposed Work-Around to the Pre-5378 Problem

["Lawrence Rosen" <[e-mail]>]

Bill Manning wrote:
> "This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of
> Section 10 of RFC2026 except that the right to produce derivative works
> is not granted."
-  and  -
> So for some IETF work product, there are/were people who assert a
> private ownership right in the materials they generated.  I think 
> that the IETF Trust should be very careful in using/reusing that 
> material, esp w/o asking permission.

This is consistent with what I've been saying, namely that IETF RFCs are
joint works of authorship.

1. The fact that IETF never previously granted the right to produce
derivative works can easily be corrected by one of the joint copyright
owners, in this case the IETF Trust, now granting that license. As I
understand it, this is what Simon and others have been arguing for all along
for the IETF out-license.

2. The IETF Trust owns a joint copyright. That also means that we can't
object if the other joint copyright owners assert their own private
ownership rights in the materials they generated. Who's stopping them? None
of the joint owners needs to ask permission of IETF or any others to do
anything they want with those jointly-owned IETF RFCs.

> There, I've spoken up ... reserving my right to speak now and later
> on this topic. (not going to "forever hold my peace").

Please excuse my poetic turn of phrase. As others have privately pointed out
to me, it is unlikely that anyone on here will respond to my plea to declare
their private claims any more than anyone does even at the worst of
weddings. That is another reason why the IETF Trust asking permission to do
what we wish with our own industry standards is such a futile exercise.
Hardly anyone has the courage or incentive to say "No" and publicly declare
their private ownership of our common standards. That is why we have to take
the risk to do what we need to do and simply dare anyone on here to sue IETF
when we allow certain kinds of derivative works.

For the lawyers on here, I'm hoping that silence now, particularly by the
major IETF contributors on this list, will be interpreted as laches or
waiver if one of them later claims an exclusive copyright interest in any
IETF RFC.

/Larry




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Manning [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 3:16 AM
> To: Lawrence Rosen
> Cc: 'IETF Discussion'
> Subject: Re: [Trustees] ANNOUNCEMENT: The IETF Trustees invite your
> reviewand comments on a proposed Work-Around to the Pre-5378 Problem
> 
> On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 02:16:43PM -0800, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> >
> > That's why I challenged Ted Hardie directly. Please don't take it
> personally
> > or as flaming, but anyone who wants to assert a private ownership right
> in
> > any copyright in any IETF RFC ought to do so now or forever hold your
> peace.
> > Otherwise, I think it best that the IETF Trust exercise its rights under
> its
> > joint copyright to do whatever is deemed appropriate and in the public
> > interest, as determined by the IETF Trustees and its legal counsel, and
> not
> > ask permission.
> >
> > /Larry
> >
> 
> 	are you talking about -all- IETF related documents (IDs, postings,
> 	april 1st RFCs, etc...) or RFCs that are standards?  (discounting
> 	BCPs, Informational RFCs, etc)
> 
> 	for a period of time, text like this appeared in at least a dozen
> 	documents:
> 
> "This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of
> Section 10 of RFC2026 except that the right to produce derivative works
> is not granted."
> 
> 	there were even a few documents that had explicit copyright
> statements
> 	that excluded ISOC & IETF from doing anything with the document,
> other
> 	than the right to publish for the period of performance for an ID,
> e.g.
> 	no longer than six months.
> 
> 	one reaction to that was the promulgation of the "Note Well" legal
> advice
> 	and the path that lead us to this point.
> 
> 	So for some IETF work product, there are/were people who assert a
> private
> 	ownership right in the materials they generated.  I think that the
> IETF
> 	Trust should be very careful in using/reusing that material, esp w/o
> 	asking permission.
> 
> 	There, I've spoken up ... reserving my right to speak now and later
> on this
> 	topic. (not going to "forever hold my peace").
> 
> 
> 
> --bill
> Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and
> certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).

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