Hi John On 08.06.2026 10:49, John R Levine wrote:
What I'm gathering from this discussion is that the participants* already* have an obligation to disclose contributors, as Brian quoted. This leads me to two questions:1. What if they don't and it is discovered prior to publication of an RFC?2. What if they don't and it is discovered after publication of an RFC?Specifically, who has what responsibility to do what? A simple erratum does not clear a document of a potential copyright violation, although it does at least correct the lack of acknowledgment.Historically, the answer has been that we don't do anything, viz. RFC 20. Other than that, I'm not aware of any RFCs that have that kind of copyright issues. As I expect you're aware, giving credit is not a defense to copyright violation. Plagiarism and copyright are only loosely related.
I want to be careful about not extrapolating from one case, and it was perhaps a kindness of ANSI that they didn't make a fuss. I also want to be careful not to toss legalese at the list, not being a lawyer myself. I ALSO want to understand if we are setting ourselves up for having to retract RFCs, but Brian's focus has been on moral, not legal, obligations. At that level, the only questions to me are (a) whether anyone needs to enforce anything, and (b) if someone does, then who is that someone, and (c) where does that need to be written? A reasonable answer is that we ALL have the moral obligation, should we learn of plagiarism, to act to prevent it, or otherwise at least properly credit work in an erratum. And that could go in this document.
If the legal side requires it, someone else is going to have to speak up. Eliot
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