Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: The IETF Trustees invite your comments on ...

>And, while IANAL, my understanding from what we've been told
>repeatedly is that "fair use exemption" is a US concept, so your
>sentence should stop after "significant re-use of material"

Many other countries have similar doctrines, often called "fair
dealing" in common law or written as specific exceptions in civil law.
There's also some related language in Berne and similar treaties.  I
don't purport to know what they all mean, other than to be confident
that a definitive answer would involve paying for several lawyers'
yachts.

Nonetheless, I can't help but seeing angels dancing on pins here.
We're worrying about situations in which someone contributes material
to the IETF that ended up in an RFC, then later goes to court and
claims to be shocked and injured that someone else used his material
in ways that RFCs are routinely used, i.e., someone acts like a
complete jerk.

Laws are not software, and there is no algorithm we can execute or set
of rules that we can construct that will keep a jerk from being a
jerk.  (They're just as creative as we are.)  Anyone who is determined
to file a nuisance lawsuit can still file one.  So I would encourage
us to worry less about hypothetical claims by heirs of deceased
contributors, and just make it clear that these are public documents
intended to be used in public ways.

R's,
John
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