Transfers of copyright versus licensing
John C Klensin <john@jck.com> Thu, 10 March 2005 20:50 UTC
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Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 15:49:18 -0500
From: John C Klensin <john@jck.com>
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Subject: Transfers of copyright versus licensing
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Hi. I made a some related comments during the IPR WG meeting on Monday about copyright transfers. It is clear from a few in-the-hall comments that my intent was not understood, so I'm going to try to clarify in this note. The IETF's traditional approach toward documents, even standards-track ones, has been to leave copyright ownership in the hands of the original authors and editors but to demand, for the IETF and ISOC, such rights as we believe are required to get our work done. That list of rights has expanded over the years, and some recent suggestions have been seen as wanting to expand it further. An expanding list of requirements for releases/ permissions/ licenses to the IETF and their provisions creates an inherent problem, which is that earlier documents do not have same set of them as later documents. Most other standards bodies have an opposite approach to the problem. They claim, explicitly and with agreement from participants as a condition for making it in the door, either... * that the participants (and their organizations, if relevant) derive sufficient benefits from participation that anything written, said, or otherwise contributed is a work for hire and hence belongs to the standards body from the moment of writing or utterance, or * at the point that a document becomes a formal part of the work program, explicit transfers of copyright are required from all authors and editors. They then guarantee some rights back to the authors according to their discretion or rules (sometimes that is a null set). If new circumstances come along, they can negotiate about any of their documents because they own them -- there is no question about what to do about old documents, authors who can't be found, etc. It is not productive to debate the legality or morality of that approach on this list. I am just reporting it. I _hate_ the idea of the IETF concluding that it needs to move toward that model. But, if we are going to conclude every year or so that we need a few more rights or a few more releases, or even to debate whether or not we do, there will be a point at which it is simply easier, and better for all concerned, for the IETF to own the documents and license rights back to the authors as appropriate, rather than continuing to try to figure out how to apply rules retroactively or avoid the need to do so. I think we need to start examining whether we have already passed that point. john _______________________________________________ Ipr-wg mailing list Ipr-wg@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg
- Transfers of copyright versus licensing John C Klensin
- Re: Transfers of copyright versus licensing Bill Sommerfeld
- Re: Transfers of copyright versus licensing Brian E Carpenter
- Re: Transfers of copyright versus licensing Simon Josefsson
- Re: Transfers of copyright versus licensing Scott W Brim
- Re: Transfers of copyright versus licensing Brian E Carpenter
- Re: Transfers of copyright versus licensing Bill Sommerfeld
- Re: Transfers of copyright versus licensing Brian E Carpenter