Re: draft-bradner-rfc-extracts-00 and the risk of "false RFCs"

I have a dumb question - what's to stop anyone from taking an RFC and
rewriting part of it and re-filing it with the IETF as the next instance in
that RFC's evolution??? I have seen absolutely nothing in any of the IETF
process documents that would prohibit this. The IETF could claim that they
were not going to publish it, but since they had already established a chain
of history for publishing an earlier instance, then this would be specific
to refusing to accept materials from one person while accepting those from
another.

Todd

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lawrence Rosen" <lrosen@rosenlaw.com>
To: "'Stephane Bortzmeyer'" <bortzmeyer@nic.fr>; <ipr-wg@ietf.org>
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 10:40 AM
Subject: RE: draft-bradner-rfc-extracts-00 and the risk of "false RFCs"

> Stephane,
>
> Your analysis is correct. There is no threat to anyone from modification
of
> RFC documents after they are published, and the only meaningful way to
> protect the "authentic" from the "forked" standard is to use trademarks.
>
> /Larry
>
> Lawrence Rosen
> Rosenlaw & Einschlag, technology law offices (www.rosenlaw.com)
> 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
> 707-485-1242  ●  fax: 707-485-1243
> Author of “Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom
>                and Intellectual Property Law” (Prentice Hall 2004)
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ipr-wg-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:ipr-wg-bounces@ietf.org] On Behalf
> > Of Stephane Bortzmeyer
> > Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 9:14 AM
> > To: ipr-wg@ietf.org
> > Subject: draft-bradner-rfc-extracts-00 and the risk of "false RFCs"
> >
> > "Extracting RFCs", draft-bradner-rfc-extracts-00, says:
> >
> > > It would clearly be confusing if someone could take an IETF standard
> > > such as RFC 3270 (MPLS Support of Differentiated Services), change a
> > > few key words and republish it, maybe in a textbook, as the
> > > definitive standards for MPLS Support of Differentiated Services.
> >
> > I owe to Glenn Maynard what seems to be a fatal flaw in that
> > reasoning. Glenn said:
> >
> > > Further, nothing prevents me from writing up my own bogus standard
> > > and calling it "RFC 3270 (MPLS Support of Differentiated Services)";
> > > since it's not a derivative work of the other RFC 3270, its
> > > copyright license is irrelevant.
> >
> > So, the restriction on modification of RFCs does *not* prevent
> > misrepresentation. Copyright only prevents you to *modify* a RFC, not
> > to *pose* as such.
> >
> > It seems the only protections against this misrepresentation are
> > trademarks ("do not dare to call your thing Coca-Cola!"), which are
> > used, for instance, by some free software projects (Mozilla and
> > NetBSD, for instance) or may be legal action for deception (I'm not
> > sure of the legal word in english, but, in France, you can certainly
> > sue for "tromperie" if someone publishes a text posing as a standard).
> >
> > Comments?
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ipr-wg mailing list
> > Ipr-wg@ietf.org
> > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg
>
>
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