Re: R. e: ITU document server now costs money

[Karl Auerbach <[e-mail]>]

> I second Jeff's motion.  Clearly labeling RFC's as being in the public
> domain is the way to go.
> > 
> > ... I believe that the
> > POISED IPR process should consider removing the "grant copyright to ISOC"
> > aspect of RFC publication and replace it with a "commit this information to
> > the public domain" (or some similar wording) statement.

This is one area in which we are going to have to do some serious
thinking.

It's my personal feeling that it will not be possible to put all
documents "into the public domain" without causing a lot of
organizations to have second thoughts about paying for employees to
participate in the IETF process.

Much as it bothers me, we've got to recognize that there are a lot of
methods and techniques that we would like to use in the net but which
are legitimately owned by various people and companies.  (I mean
"legitimate" not in the purely legal sense of ownership of a copyright
or patent, many of which I consider to be bogus, but rather that the
owner has really put some effort into the creation of the method or
technique and really does deserve some credit, financial or
otherwise.)

I'm not so much enamored with "public domain" as with "free use".  In
other words, I don't care if a document contains materials which are
"owned" by someone as long as everyone has the ability to freely use
the ideas and to elaborate upon them.

		--karl--