Re: Last Call: 'IETF Rights in Contributions' to BCP

["C. M. Heard" <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, The IESG wrote:
> The IESG has received a request from the Intellectual Property
> Rights WG to consider the following Internet-Drafts as BCP.
> o Intellectual Property Rights (IPR): 'IETF Rights in Contributions'
>     <draft-ietf-ipr-submission-rights-06.txt>
>     BCP
...
> File(s) can be obtained via
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipr-submission-rights-06.txt

An issue has come up on the [e-mail] mailing list in
connection with draft-ietf-bridge-8021x-02.txt that makes it seem to
me that the submissions-rights draft does not adequately deal with
republication of standards from other SDOs as informational RFCs,
particularly when MIB modules are involved.  I'm not sure if such a
case has actually arisen before.  For background on the discussion
see http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/bridge/current/

First, in Section 5.4, "Copyright Notice (required for all IETF
Documents)", it says:

   (Normally placed at the end of the IETF Document.)

      "Copyright (C) The Internet Society (year). This document is
      subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in RFC
      XXXX and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their
      rights."

   [note to the RFC Editor - XXXX above to be replaced with the number
   of this document]

   Additional copyright notices are not permitted in IETF Documents
   except in the case where the document is the product of a joint
   development effort between the IETF and another standards development
   organization.  Such exceptions must be approved on an individual
   basis by the IAB.

It seems to me that this does not adequately cover the cases where a
proprietary specification or a standard that is the product of
another SDO is being republished in an informational RFC.  In many
if not most such cases the RFCswill require a copyright notice that
does not grant the right to create derivative works (or, as per the
second comment below, grants only very limited rights).  Note that
such a variant copyright (without the right to produce derivative
works) has appeared in many such works in the past (RFC 3394 being
the most recent one that I could find).  Also, it seems to me
unreasonable that the copyright notice in such an RFC could not
(even with IAB approval) mention the organization that originally
produced the specification that is being republished and that
retains change control over it.

The second issue has specifically to do with MIB or PIB modules that
are included an informational RFC of this sort ... the
IEEE8021-PAE-MIB in draft-ietf-bridge-8021x-02.txt being an example.
Now, Section 5.2 (entitled "Derivative Works Limitation") says what
needs to be done in an Internet-Draft if a contributor wants to
disallow derivative works except for extraction of a MIB or PIB
module:

   If the Contributor desires to eliminate the IETF's right to make
   modifications and derivative works of an Contribution (other than
   translations), one of the two the following notices may be included
   in the Status of memo section of an Internet-Draft and included in a
   published RFC:

   a. "This document may not be modified, and derivative works of it may
      not be created, except to publish it as a RFC and to translate it
      into languages other than English."

   b. "This document may not be modified, and derivative works of it may
      not be created."

   In the cases of MIB or PIB modules and in other cases where the
   Contribution includes material that is meant to be extracted in order
   to be used, the following should be appended to statement 5.2 (a) or
   5.2 (b):

      "other than to extract section XX as-is for separate use."

   Notice 5.2(a) is used if the Contributor intends for the Contribution
   to be published as a RFC.  Notice 5.2(b) is used along with the
   Publication Limitation in Section 5.3 when the Contributor does not
   intend for the Contribution to be published as a RFC.

So far, so good.  For draft-ietf-bridge-8021x-02.txt notice 5.2 (a)
with the extra statement appended would probably be appropriate.
However, the extra statement would need to need to find its way into
the Full Copyright Statement in the published RFC, and I didn't see
a mechanism in the submission-rights draft for this to happen.

A third issue is that the abbreviated notice for MIB and PIB modules
in Section 5.6 does not seem to seem to be entirely appropriate for
a MIB or PIB module for which the IETF does not own change control.
The submission-rights draft says:

   a. in MIB modules, PIB modules and similar material commonly
      extracted from IETF Documents, except for material that is being
      placed under IANA maintenance, the following abbreviated notice
      shall be included in the body of the material that will be
      extracted in lieu of the notices otherwise required by Section 5:

         "Copyright (C) <year> The Internet Society.  This version of
         this MIB module is part of RFC XXXX;  see the RFC itself for
         full legal notices."

Specifically, it does not seem reasonable to me to require mention of
ISOC but not to allow mention of the organization that originally
produced the MIB module and that retains change control over it.  In
fact, I would think that the nature of the copyright notice in the MIB
module (and even whether there is one) should probably be determined
by the party that is granting permission to republish it;  after all,
the abbreviated copyright notice covers a derivative work (the
extracted MIB module), not the RFC from which it was extracted.

My apologies for not bringing up these issues before.  The truth is
that they did not occur to me until now.

Mike Heard


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