Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Dave CROCKER d...@dcrocker.net writes: My assumption was not that the work was available for IETF use. My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. The IETF was free to do whatever the hell if felt like with the work and I retained no rights. Use it. Give it to another group. Kill it. Whatever. Really. That's the cultural basis that I believe formed this community and informed participants in it. d/ ps. Well, to be more complete, I assumed that IETF ownership meant that the document was required to be publicly available and -- though I didn't know the term at the time -- there was public permission for derivative works by whoever felt like doing the deriving. These are good ideas to put in a requirements for IETF copying license document, as input to lawyers to craft legal text for. When translated into legal text, I believe the IETF cultural preference maps closely to the BSD license. None of the RFC policies around copyright (including RFC 2026, RFC 3978, and RFC 5378) are close to your assumptions. Most critically, none of the policies transfers copyrights from the contributor to the IETF. It is unfortunate that there has been such a big gap between the IETF policy texts and what many people with long IETF experience believe it should say. This complicated the IPR WG effort: rather than letting the new text map more closely to the IETF culture, the document authors re-used text from earlier documents. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 20:29 -0800 Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: Reply below. /Larry ... [LR:] I am asking as an attorney and IETF participant (we're all individuals here, I've been told, with individual opinions) who is anxious to understand why so many people on here are worried about copyright infringement and are seeking to protect copyrights they don't even have the honesty to claim outright. I care about IETF specifications in this email thread, not about any specific clients. As to whether I might represent one or more clients on this issue, my lips are sealed. To answer a slightly different question, but one that may be more useful, the IETF was propelled along the path of specific policies, with the original ones clearly recognizing the installed base, because of credible threats to block work unless everything were rewritten from scratch to (at least) remove all of the author's sentences. The situation I remember best involved work built on the author's text, but the WG consensus differed from the author's concepts in some ways he considered fundamental. I don't recall the details, but I believe that the threats extended at least into cease and desist letters, not just the usual profile of posturing, noise, and idle threats. I think it would be fair to summarize the thinking of the powers-that-be at the time as just not wanting to be the target of that kind of interaction and process, much less any legal action that might follow, regardless of estimates about who would prevail in such an action. You are, of course, entitled to any opinions you may have about whether that was the right decision and whether it was properly implemented. However, because it appeared nearly certain that any specific and well-funded legal effort would result in significant delays to the IETF's work, a large fraction of the community who were close to the issues --probably large enough to constitute rough consensus-- because extremely risk-adverse, where the perceived risk involved the opportunity for lost time, service of various documents and responses, preparation of other documents, interaction with courts, etc., rather than more specific questions about who would ultimately prevail. My apologies for not supplying specific names, dates, and descriptions of the incident, but there have also been threats of libel actions if the positions of the actors were not represented accurately (see risk-adversity and definition above) and, independent of that, I have no wish to resurrect the ghosts of that incident in the magical time of year (or ever). But we have certainly had people in the community who have tried to use copyright in document text to impede the IETF process and to strike out against people and actions of which they disapproved. Finally, for better or worse, your belief that Both are absolutely essential for implementation of open standards does not represent the consensus in the IETF community, or at least has not represented it so far, unless you use the term open standards in a way that makes it tautologically true. Certainly the FOSS community has managed to implement standards from, e.g., ITU, JTC1, and several ISO member bodies whose text is as or more restricted than anything the IETF has proposed. Perhaps that has been done on the basis of advice from you or others that no one is likely to actually try to enforce the intrinsic or claimed rights, but the organizations that hold those rights have not been persuaded to change their policies or claims as a result. I see a problem here, not necessarily because of claims someone might assert but because of claims that 5378 requires authors to assert. The latter turns this into a series of decisions by individuals and, in some situations, their employers. If even a few of them are sufficient adverse to the risk of getting tied up in legal proceedings, we end up in exactly the situation that we started down the path of IETF IPR policies to avoid -- significant delays to, or disruption of, the orderly progress of the standards process. Unless you are willing to give us legal advice on which we can rely (and presumably, with it, assurances that doing so would not put you in a potential conflict of interest with anyone [else] who might have retained you), your trying to make estimates of the likelihood of someone asserting claims (and/or prevailing if they did) don't help me or the IETF very much. But the core of the issue I'm having with your note is that I believe we have gotten ourselves into a situation that requires a solution in the near term. I see reintroducing an argument that everything should just be free (presumably as in free beer) -- an argument that IETF WGs have rejected several times-- and the rehashed discussion that would follow as a distraction and impediment to getting to such a solution, not a help on the critical path to making progress. YMMD, of course, but let's be explicit about
RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On Thu Dec 18 11:08:09 2008, John C Klensin wrote: To answer a slightly different question, but one that may be more useful, the IETF was propelled along the path of specific policies, with the original ones clearly recognizing the installed base, because of credible threats to block work unless everything were rewritten from scratch to (at least) remove all of the author's sentences. The situation I remember best involved work built on the author's text, but the WG consensus differed from the author's concepts in some ways he considered fundamental. I don't recall the details, but I believe that the threats extended at least into cease and desist letters, not just the usual profile of posturing, noise, and idle threats. It could well be that I'm misunderstanding, but that kind of situation would surely fall into derogatory treatment, ie, the stuff covered by Article 6bis of the Berne convention, or, for UK people, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 sections 80-83. In Berne language: the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation. And this sounds like, basically, what happened, at least from the perspective of the contributor. Note that moral rights are often not transferrable in various jurisdictions, and certainly aren't automatically transferred anywhere as far as I know - section 11bis seems to prevent that. Since these are moral rights, and not copyrights, and they're not mentioned at all by RFC 5378, surely the situation is entirely unchanged by this? To put it another way, if the intent here was to avoid a repeat of this incident, then what's needed here is a waiver of moral rights, rather than a license of copyrights, which is beyond my ability to figure out. (I am, incidentally, not a lawyer, for those living in jurisdictions which like to have that in writing somewhere). As another point, by submitting a document as author, I take it I am making the claim that all rights required under RFC 5378 are granted by all contributors, their employers, or estates, as appropriate - does this open me to litigation should a contributor I didn't know about complains? What if someone else submits the document, am I still liable? Where is the record of who submitted the document if not? (Presumably, once the document passes through AUTH48, I must be liable, having given explicit assent to it). To put this another way, is contributing a revised document to the IETF now too risky an action to contemplate? Dave. -- Dave Cridland - mailto:d...@cridland.net - xmpp:d...@dave.cridland.net - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/ - http://dave.cridland.net/ Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On Dec 18, 2008, at 7:17 AM, Dave Cridland wrote: On Thu Dec 18 11:08:09 2008, John C Klensin wrote: To answer a slightly different question, but one that may be more useful, the IETF was propelled along the path of specific policies, with the original ones clearly recognizing the installed base, because of credible threats to block work unless everything were rewritten from scratch to (at least) remove all of the author's sentences. The situation I remember best involved work built on the author's text, but the WG consensus differed from the author's concepts in some ways he considered fundamental. I don't recall the details, but I believe that the threats extended at least into cease and desist letters, not just the usual profile of posturing, noise, and idle threats. It could well be that I'm misunderstanding, but that kind of situation would surely fall into derogatory treatment, ie, the stuff covered by Article 6bis of the Berne convention, or, for UK people, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 sections 80-83. In Berne language: the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation. And this sounds like, basically, what happened, at least from the perspective of the contributor. Note that moral rights are often not transferrable in various jurisdictions, and certainly aren't automatically transferred anywhere as far as I know - section 11bis seems to prevent that. Since these are moral rights, and not copyrights, and they're not mentioned at all by RFC 5378, surely the situation is entirely unchanged by this? To put it another way, if the intent here was to avoid a repeat of this incident, then what's needed here is a waiver of moral rights, rather than a license of copyrights, which is beyond my ability to figure out. (I am, incidentally, not a lawyer, for those living in jurisdictions which like to have that in writing somewhere). I have been involved a little in the US planning for various negotiations of the inclusion of webcaster rights in the WIPO under the Berne convention (I generally oppose what has been proposed). At the risk of violating my mantra (Engineers should not try and be lawyers), I do not think we should go there or need to go there. Note that, while the USA is not a signatory to the Rome Convention (even though our WIPO negotiators sometimes seem to like to act like we are), the USA is a signatory to the Berne Convention : http://www.copyrightaid.co.uk/copyright_information/berne_convention_signatories However, Article 6bis(3) allows national legislatures to determine the treatment of moral rights; the USA has not done so. In fact, moral rights were a major sticking point in the US's signing the Berne convention at all. Under the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, 17 USC 101, Section 2 (2) The obligations of the United States under the Berne Convention may be performed only pursuant to appropriate domestic law. The IETF Trust is governed under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, a state in the USA, so it is governed by US Law, not the Berne convention directly. In the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, 17 USC 101, Section 3 (b) (b) Certain Rights Not Affected.--The provisions of the Berne Convention, the adherence of the United States thereto, and satisfaction of United States obligations thereunder, do no expand or reduce any right of an author of a work, whether claimed under Federal, State, or the common law-- (1) to claim authorship of the work; or (2) to object to any distortion, mutilation, or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the work, that would prejudice the author's honor or reputation. If you want more, I would start here : http://www.rbs2.com/moral.htm I would urge the IETF Trust to stick to US / Virginia law only. Regards Marshall As another point, by submitting a document as author, I take it I am making the claim that all rights required under RFC 5378 are granted by all contributors, their employers, or estates, as appropriate - does this open me to litigation should a contributor I didn't know about complains? What if someone else submits the document, am I still liable? Where is the record of who submitted the document if not? (Presumably, once the document passes through AUTH48, I must be liable, having given explicit assent to it). To put this another way, is contributing a revised document to the IETF now too risky an action to contemplate? Dave. -- Dave Cridland - mailto:d...@cridland.net - xmpp:d...@dave.cridland.net - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/ - http://dave.cridland.net/ Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Speaking as an individual, IANAL, etc., a few general comments... First, overall, the issues John raises are real and need to be addressed, IMO. Second, I know of cases (while I was AD) where a WG participant owned the copyright on an ID the WG had been discussing, and then balked at making requested changes. In at least one case, a document was rewritten in clean room fashion to get around potential problems. We do not want to do these sorts of things. They are painful and frustrating, they delay work, and they are a drain on precious cycles that could better be spent doing other things. Such scenarios may not happen often, but they can (and have) happened. Some former IETF participants have walked away from the IETF in a disgruntled fashion. In no way would it be acceptable for the IETF as an organization to allow anyone to have the potential ability to block IETF work by withholding any needed additional/new rights. Yet, that is what RFC 5378 appears to do. One of the features of the current IETF IPR (not copyright) policies is that each individual WG decides on a case-by-case basis what to do with IPR assertions. Those discussions are often messy, non-terminating and contentious because there are unknowns (i.e., unquantifiable future risk), and the normal rules engineers follow don't apply (e.g., the lawyers and licensing folk see issues very differently than engineers do). Different people (and companies) see the risks very differently. So what works for one individual won't work for someone else. Placing the responsibility on individual authors (and by implication their employers) for getting necessary permissions to use text contributions from others (e.g., when revising previous RFCs) is problematic when such permissions can't easily be obtained because: - it places unknown/hard to quantify future risk on the individual (who may or may or may not care) - by implication, it places future risk on their employer (who probably very much will care) One might hypothesize that some will say this is silly and just continue to submit documents without worrying much. Others (like those working for larger corporations) may well find that a general corporate policy will not allow them to take such steps (legal departments rarely issue blank checks for future unknown risk). Consequently, all cases will likely be treated as exceptions to be evaluated on individual merits and on a case-by-case basis. Anyone who has had significant interactions with legal departments on such matters will understand how problematic this would be in practice. There would be a huge discincentive to authoring work of this nature, and at best there would be (potentially lengthy) delays. Most likely, the pool of available authors would simply shrink. That would not be good for the IETF. Thomas ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Silly question. Is this discussion more appropriate to ietf-ipr? One could argue that ietf-ipr looked at this question for two years prior to submitting the new boilerplate, and by missing it made it clear that they weren't adequate to review. That said, there was also an IETF last call, and none of us detected the issue until Sam brought it up. But really - isn't this about IPR? On Dec 17, 2008, at 1:05 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote: John C Klensin wrote: But both your comments and that can't get it right issue just reinforce my view that we either need an escape mechanism for old text or need a model in which the Trust, not the submitters, take responsibility for text Contributed to the IETF under older rules. For the record, I don't know how to make the latter work (partially because, like you, I try to avoid simulating a lawyer) and am not proposing it. I have held off proposing this latter view, because I've assumed it was obvious and that those expert in the legal issues rejected it. But from a practical standpoint, it is the most accurate representation of work done on IETF documents (within the working gorup structure.) That is: Working groups are part of the IETF and 'authors' of working group documents are acting as when writing IETF documents.agents of the IETF. While there might be underlying intellectual property owned by the companies that authors work for, the actual document is commissioned by, and copyright should be owned by, the IETF. Let me carry it further: When Erik Huizer and I wrote the first IETF Working Group Guidelines document, it was at our initiative. (Well, really, Erik's.) When it was adopted by the IETF, I automatically assumed that the IETF owned it. That is, after all, what we assert when outside technology is brought into the IETF and we insist that they are handing over change control. What is change control if not the authority to make changes to the document? So when Scott Bradner did the revision to the IETF Working Group Guidelines document the idea that he had a legal obligation to get our permission would have -- and certainly now does -- strike me as silly. That's me talking as a participant, about pragmatics, not me pretending to be a attorney, talking about copyright law. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 14:00 -0800 Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com wrote: Particularly since the permission to create derivative works and successor standards has been granted as part of the boilerplate for a long long time. Yes. But that was permission given directly by the authors to the IETF, for IETF use. 5378 removes that mechanism, which I always considered fairly elegant, in favor of a transfer of rights to the Trust which then licenses those rights back to the IETF participant. All 5.3 does is to give those rights to the Trust (read the first paragraph), and the Trust doesn't get them unless the author can and does make the assertions of 5.1 (which includes rounding up the prior contributors). ... Consequently, as a WG co-chair who wants his WG to finish up in this century, I read RFC 5378 section 5.3 as giving working groups what they need so they can ignore all this stuff about tracking down long-gone contributors, and that it's merely a re-incarnation of what has long been the intent behind the NOTE WELL text. What gives your WG the ability to function is 5.4, where the Trust gives back to the IETF participants what the Trust received under 5.1 and 5.3. But they can't give back what they don't have, so, if your WG is required to derive its permission to do work from 5.4 and a previous author takes a walk rather than making the 5.1 guarantees and 5.3 transfers _to the Trust_... My guess, with the usual non-lawyer disclaimers, is that we would be having a less complicated discussion if 5378 _preserved_ the direct grant from Contributors to the IETF for IETF use in addition to whatever it required be given to the Trust. That would let your WG (and Dave's revisions) continue to function under the old rules and assumptions even if we still needed to have a debate about whether 5378 conformance was required of every document posted, obligations on submitters, etc. ... john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Cullen Jennings wrote: Larry, your email sounded dangerously close to suggesting that it might be ok to break the copyright law because no one would object to it. Is that what you are suggesting? Not at all. But every attorney is charged with an obligation to help others understand and interpret the law even if that interpretation differs from that of some other attorneys. Fifty years from now, after IETF is dissolved and most of us have passed away, I don't want the dead hand of copyright reaching out from the grave to prevent anyone from freely modifying TCP/IP to satisfy modern requirements. It may be that, because Congress further extends the copyright term, the Disney corporation will then still own and control the copyright in Mickey Mouse cartoons, but the notion that anyone owns and controls the functional underpinnings of technology by placing a copyright notice on it is simply unacceptable. That is a perversion of the law, not something that a copyright lawyer who supports open source, open content and open standards can countenance. I hope that the participants in IETF develop IPR policies that support the fundamental freedom to invent--and to describe in words--whatever functions we need for our world to progress. Best regards, /Larry -Original Message- From: Cullen Jennings [mailto:flu...@cisco.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:24 PM To: lro...@rosenlaw.com Cc: 'IETF discussion list' Subject: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary Larry, your email sounded dangerously close to suggesting that it might be ok to break the copyright law because no one would object to it. Is that what you are suggesting? On Dec 17, 2008, at 5:56 PM, Lawrence Rosen wrote: Dave Crocker wrote: That was the culture. Law often follows culture, since culture creates established practice. I hope you're right. May I ask: Is there anyone on this list who is asserting a current copyright interest in any IETF RFC--on your own behalf or on behalf of your company--that would encumber the freedom of any IETF participants to copy, create derivative works, and distribute that RFC in accordance with IETF culture? On what basis do you assert that current copyright interest in those RFCs? Have you registered that copyright? Is that copyright interest sole or joint with any other entity, including other contributors or the IETF Trust itself? I'm not interested to hear about hypothetical situations. I would like to know if there are any actual claims of copyright ownership that people here are even considering to assert against IETF's complete freedom to act and establish functional Internet standards. /Larry -Original Message- From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Dave CROCKER Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 3:34 PM To: Brian E Carpenter Cc: IETF discussion list Subject: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary Brian E Carpenter wrote: On 2008-12-18 11:32, Dave CROCKER wrote: My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. False. You never implicitly transferred ownership. Yes I did. As I say, that was the culture. Scott didn't have to come to Erik or me and ask permission, and he didn't even have to think about whether he was required to. That was the culture. Law often follows culture, since culture creates established practice. I do realize that that was a long time ago and that we certainly have many participants holding different views. I was reviewing the history on the general belief that a crisis of the current sort can often be aided by taking a fresh look at first principles. But since I've now had a number of public and private exchanges with folk who have been diligent participants in this topic and since none has seemed to understand -- nevermind embrace -- the line of discussion I've tried to raise, I'll go back to my observer status and let the folks who are putting the real effort into this continue on. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Thursday, 18 December, 2008 09:10 -0800 Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: Cullen Jennings wrote: Larry, your email sounded dangerously close to suggesting that it might be ok to break the copyright law because no one would object to it. Is that what you are suggesting? Not at all. But every attorney is charged with an obligation to help others understand and interpret the law even if that interpretation differs from that of some other attorneys. Fifty years from now, after IETF is dissolved and most of us have passed away, I don't want the dead hand of copyright reaching out from the grave to prevent anyone from freely modifying TCP/IP to satisfy modern requirements. ... ...the notion that anyone owns and controls the functional underpinnings of technology by placing a copyright notice on it is simply unacceptable. ... I hope that the participants in IETF develop IPR policies that support the fundamental freedom to invent--and to describe in words--whatever functions we need for our world to progress. Larry, Now I'm confused. To my weak, layperson's, mind, it appears that you are conflating the underlying intellectual property in TCP/IP (whatever, if anything, that means), or the functional underpinnings of [that] technology, with the copyright in the form in which the protocols are expressed -- something that you and your professional colleagues have repeatedly warned us against. I would assume that, if someone were revising TCP or IP fifty years hence, they would end up creating new text, rather than moving a lot of technical text forward, and that they would do so for all sorts of technical reasons independent of copyright constraints.The practical issues are very different from tweaking an existing protocol only a decade or so out (or somewhat more) to clarify it or change its maturity level... and, of course, are different from the image of a cartoon mouse. As an exercise that I don't have time to conduct, it would be interesting to see how much of the text of the original IP specification is still present in the IPv6 one... and that was only 20 years and may, in retrospect, have involved too few substantive changes. That is a perversion of the law, not something that a copyright lawyer who supports open source, open content and open standards can countenance. Which is something about which you need to persuade the Congress, not the IETF, as I assume you have tried to do. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com writes: As an exercise that I don't have time to conduct, it would be interesting to see how much of the text of the original IP specification is still present in the IPv6 one... and that was only 20 years and may, in retrospect, have involved too few substantive changes. I wouldn't spend a lot of time on such an exercise. I'd be very surprised if there is ANY common text. All the documents I am aware of were written from scratch. Thomas ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
John C Klensin wrote: I would assume that, if someone were revising TCP or IP fifty years hence, they would end up creating new text, rather than moving a lot of technical text forward, and that they would do so for all sorts of technical reasons independent of copyright constraints. Now I'm confused. When we revise a technical specification in IETF, we try (to some degree) to avoid creating new text unless necessary, for fear of introducing subtle incompatibilities. Why wouldn't someone fifty years hence have similar concerns? I'll grant that the text in a lot of these old RFCs looks a bit dated and imprecise by now. But if I were revising TCP, I'd still use RFC 793 as a starting point, and the resulting documents would probably qualify as derivative works. Keith p.s. Regarding the IPv4 to IPv6 comparison, one could argue that the IPv6 spec _should_ have included more text from RFC 793, as there are indeed subtle differences between the IPv4 and IPv4 protocols that have caused unanticipated problems. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Thursday, 18 December, 2008 14:15 -0500 Thomas Narten nar...@us.ibm.com wrote: John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com writes: As an exercise that I don't have time to conduct, it would be interesting to see how much of the text of the original IP specification is still present in the IPv6 one... and that was only 20 years and may, in retrospect, have involved too few substantive changes. I wouldn't spend a lot of time on such an exercise. I'd be very surprised if there is ANY common text. All the documents I am aware of were written from scratch. That is pretty much what I expected. To the extent to which we can extrapolate from it (and I think we can), Larry's concern about copyright-blockage on such work is probably not significant. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Thursday, 18 December, 2008 14:42 -0500 Keith Moore mo...@network-heretics.com wrote: John C Klensin wrote: I would assume that, if someone were revising TCP or IP fifty years hence, they would end up creating new text, rather than moving a lot of technical text forward, and that they would do so for all sorts of technical reasons independent of copyright constraints. Now I'm confused. When we revise a technical specification in IETF, we try (to some degree) to avoid creating new text unless necessary, for fear of introducing subtle incompatibilities. Why wouldn't someone fifty years hence have similar concerns? Because there is a big difference between clarifying or updating an existing spec and writing a new protocol. I'll grant that the text in a lot of these old RFCs looks a bit dated and imprecise by now. But if I were revising TCP, I'd still use RFC 793 as a starting point, and the resulting documents would probably qualify as derivative works. That would be your choice. And you are a lot more likely to be around 50 years from now to make it than I am. However, trying to write a new spec with IPR that conforms to 5378 but that used significant text from 783 would require you to obtain Jon Postel's permission which, I think, would send you swimming in a can of worms of appropriate size for you to do so. So, to write such a spec with 783 text, you would either have to un-do 5378, create the type of exception procedure that caused the current version of this thread to be initiated, or deal with that can or worms. It would be up to you to determine which of those options would be most attractive... or whether a complete rewrite or giving up entirely would. Q.E.D. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
tell you what - if by some very small chance (probably less than 1%) I'm still around 50 years from now and feel like revising RFC 793 at that time, I'll trust that you've already reconnected with Jon and gotten his permission :) either that, or I'll already be dead, and I'll ask him myself. seriously, my guess is that 50 years from now, either TCP will be irrelevant (if not the whole Internet) or RFC 5378 will have been fixed. and those two are not independent. Keith ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Keith == mo...@network-heretics.com writes: Keith tell you what - if by some very small chance (probably less Keith than 1%) I'm still around 50 years from now and feel like Keith revising RFC 793 at that time, I'll trust that you've Keith already reconnected with Jon and gotten his permission :) Keith either that, or I'll already be dead, and I'll ask him Keith myself. I tell you what. I'll trust that Jon or his estate is not going to sue us if we use his work in the IETF context to make new internet standards. Remember, we're discussing legalities here and for the most part US civil law. There are some things you decide are acceptable risks simply because the chance someone with standing to do so will take action against you are small enough that you stop caring. It's not an perfect world from an engineering standpoint, but guess what? There is not perfect compliance with our specs either. So, honestly, Jon's text is just not something I'm worried about even today. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Sam Hartman wrote: Dave == Dave CROCKER d...@dcrocker.net writes: Dave Joel M. Halpern wrote: Yes, having to get rights from folks is a pain. Dave When the person is not longer available, the effect is more Dave than discomfort. Strictly speaking, that's not actually true. We're talking about copyright here; you can rewrite the ideas in your own words and avoid needing to worry about rights. Rewriting some ideas in your own words might involve some significant discomfort, but it is doable. Given the care with which text is often drafted within a WG and the requirement for often hard-won consensus regarding such text, I am skeptical that such text can be rewritten to capture the same ideas and still retain consensus. Peter ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Tuesday, 16 December, 2008 22:08 -0500 Joel M. Halpern j...@joelhalpern.com wrote: I have a very different view of this situation, and disagree wstrongly with John's recommended fix (or the equivalent fix of completely rolling back 5378 and 5377.) First and foremost, it should be kept in ming by anyone reading this that the IPR working was convened by the then IETF chair, and continued by succeeding chairs because there ... Secondly, giving people a choice of terms is basically going to create confusion. For example, one of the issues raised in the working group was that our previous rights grant appeared not to properly allow folks to modify code. And it required them to include things in used code that made it hard to use ... Yes, having to get rights from folks is a pain. But if we are not willing to push to do that, then we might as well consider that the rights granted to the IETF are locked in stone forever, and can never be upgraded, because it will never happen. ... Joel, Let me make my personal position on this, and the reason for my draft, clear, since it obviously was not to you (and therefore I presume others). I agree that there were perceived problems that needed to be fixed. I think you have given a good summary of most of them. It is exactly for that reason that I did not propose rolling back 5378 (or 5377). My comments about that move in my response to Dave was to point out that it was impractical, not to advocate it even if it was. Please read the draft. I have two major objections to 5378 as it turned out and as I now understand things. The first is that there will be cases in which obtaining permission from previous authors or contributors is effectively impossible, rather than merely inconvenient (if it were merely a pain, I might be annoyed, but I wouldn't be complaining or proposing alternatives at this late date). But we have situations in which people have died and getting those rights would require action of probate courts; situations in which companies that might have controlled those rights have gone out of business, leaving complicated (and probably expensive-to-resolve) legal questions about who can actually grant the rights today; and situations in which people have departed from companies under tense circumstances and would find it extremely difficult (not merely a pain) to go back and ask for additional rights for the IETF. 5378 provides no waiver mechanisms or escape hatches for those kinds of situations. If someone is taking it seriously, they are left with a choice: (i) Go to the time and expense to obtain the rights, despite obstacles and, if the rights available and their ownership are ambiguous, assume the risks of making the assertions and posting the document. (ii) Decide that the provisions of RFC 5378 are really not intended to be taken seriously and just go ahead and post the document without worrying about those contributors whose permission is impractical to obtain. (iii) Rewrite the document to remove any copyright dependencies on text whose status is uncertain or for which rights transfers are significantly difficult. (iv) Take a walk and abandon the document. Now, assuming that you think 5378 is to be taken seriously (your note certainly implies that), I infer that you think either (i) or (iii) will happen. Especially after noting that rewriting significant amounts of text creates considerable risk of introducing errors (e.g., for technical reasons, a WG might not stand for a rewrite even if the author/editor were willing to do it), I am less optimistic. Losing even a single document that way is not, IMO, good for the IETF. Of course, you may disagree and believe that these new IPR rules and the way they are structured is more important. Second, the structure of the new rules appears to require me, as a submitting author, to make assertions that go well beyond anything that has been required in the past. Prior to 5378, I could rely on custom (and sometimes contract) since the beginning of the RFC series and, since 2026 and certainly since the Note Well started being used, on them to know that previous contributors had granted rights to the IETF to do the IETF's work. Consequently, if, for example, I started a new draft by incorporating pieces of a published RFC, I could reasonably expect that the rights were in place for all prior contributions and go ahead and submit the document with only concern about new contributions, especially mine. I didn't even need to know who the previous contributors were. Now we are in a position in which _no_ document posted before the beginning of last month has the 5378 rights associated with its content unless people have generated an explicit release. And I have to assert that I've made an effort (consistent with someone's interpretation of what I
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Sanm, I believe it has already been observed by others that this is not a reasonable scenario. However your response does provide a good example of just how badly the latest model is broken. d/ Sam Hartman wrote: Dave == Dave CROCKER d...@dcrocker.net writes: Dave Joel M. Halpern wrote: Yes, having to get rights from folks is a pain. Dave When the person is not longer available, the effect is more Dave than discomfort. Strictly speaking, that's not actually true. We're talking about copyright here; you can rewrite the ideas in your own words and avoid needing to worry about rights. Rewriting some ideas in your own words might involve some significant discomfort, but it is doable. -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 12:31 -0500 Sam Hartman hartmans-i...@mit.edu wrote: Dave == Dave CROCKER d...@dcrocker.net writes: Dave Joel M. Halpern wrote: Yes, having to get rights from folks is a pain. Dave When the person is not longer available, the effect is more Dave than discomfort. Strictly speaking, that's not actually true. We're talking about copyright here; you can rewrite the ideas in your own words and avoid needing to worry about rights. Rewriting some ideas in your own words might involve some significant discomfort, but it is doable. Well, sort of. Let me return to my current favorite example. My (very) crude estimate is that RFC 5321 is about 20% Jon Postel's text. It is a 90-ish page document, so that is 15+ pages (my arithmetic isn't bad, I'm making some guesses about boilerplate, table of contents, etc.), not a few paragraphs to be rewritten. In addition, the DRUMS WG that was responsible for 2821 and the mailing list that was responsible for 5321 repeatedly made decisions to not make unnecessary textual changes for fear or making subtle errors. The judgment about the risks associated with rewrites is the sort of technical judgment that WGs are expected to make; it isn't a copyright matter. I assume they would be similarly resistant to rewriting that much text into my own words. The bottom line is that, for many documents, the plausible choices aren't between incur a little pain and rewrite text into one's own words. They are between obtain releases that are nearly impossible to obtain without investments of considerable time, money, and other resources and abandon document. That is going to leave individual authors, and the IETF, with a decision about whether the universal implementation of RFC 5378 is important enough to not advance or revise some documents. I don't think so. I don't even like the idea of having to make that choice. YMMD john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
John C Klensin wrote: I agree that there were perceived problems that needed to be fixed. I think you have given a good summary of most of them. It is exactly for that reason that I did not propose rolling back 5378 (or 5377). Unfortunately, we do not get to pick and choose the parts of a problematic standard that we like. The thing is in force. We have a crisis because of it. While we had some problems before it went into force, we did not have any crises. By pursuing a path of use whichever you want we wind up adding more ambiguity and, therefore, fuzziness, to an already seriously broken situation. Folks, We are stuck in the midst of a classic decision-making error, revolving around sunk costs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost which leads to persistent efforts to fix the unfixable. Gosh, only a little more effort or a small band-aid here or there, will take away the immediate problem. In reality, tenacity due to a desire to save the invested effort is that it virtually never results in a real fix. We need to reverse the current spec, go back to the one that worked fine (for the cases it covered) and re-think how to handle the new stuff. To repeat: The idea that anyone would think it viable to have a potentially small -bis effort need to rewrite potentially large portions of the original text demonstrates just how stuck in the mire we are, with no clue how to get out. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Dave == Dave CROCKER d...@dcrocker.net writes: Dave Joel M. Halpern wrote: Yes, having to get rights from folks is a pain. Dave When the person is not longer available, the effect is more Dave than discomfort. Strictly speaking, that's not actually true. We're talking about copyright here; you can rewrite the ideas in your own words and avoid needing to worry about rights. Rewriting some ideas in your own words might involve some significant discomfort, but it is doable. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Dear John; From your email : On Dec 17, 2008, at 12:16 PM, John C Klensin wrote: (iii) Rewrite the document to remove any copyright dependencies on text whose status is uncertain or for which rights transfers are significantly difficult. This is a dangerous solution, and may not be one at all. My mantra on these issues is : Engineers should not try and be lawyers. (And, lawyers should not try and be engineers.) I try to follow it personally, as I am definitely not a lawyer (and, of course, I am not referring to anyone who is cross-trained). But I do know this - merely rewriting a document is not necessarily enough to remove copyright dependancies. J.K. Rowling, for example, won a suit against someone who wrote a Lexicon of her work : http://www.fictionaddiction.net/Publishing-Industry-News/rowling-wins-copyright-infringement-lawsuit.html If this actually became an issue, it would be decided by a court, and I would not regard either myself or the vast majority of IETF contributors as competent to judge how a court would react to any given rewriting of an RFC if it went to trial. Regards Marshall ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Marshall, I completely agree. I also don't want to have us start down the path of rewriting text: most of what the IETF produces are technical documents, not works of fiction, and the odds significant rewriting screwing things up are high, perhaps a near-certainty. I also share your dislike for provisions whose validity we can even guess at until they end up in front of a court. I don't know what to do about that other that to rely on advice of Counsel, but that doesn't stop me from preferring this is a well-tested approach to we hope it will work out this way. But both your comments and that can't get it right issue just reinforce my view that we either need an escape mechanism for old text or need a model in which the Trust, not the submitters, take responsibility for text Contributed to the IETF under older rules. For the record, I don't know how to make the latter work (partially because, like you, I try to avoid simulating a lawyer) and am not proposing it. But, logically, it might be the other possibility here. john --On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 13:02 -0500 Marshall Eubanks t...@multicasttech.com wrote: Dear John; From your email : On Dec 17, 2008, at 12:16 PM, John C Klensin wrote: (iii) Rewrite the document to remove any copyright dependencies on text whose status is uncertain or for which rights transfers are significantly difficult. This is a dangerous solution, and may not be one at all. My mantra on these issues is : Engineers should not try and be lawyers. ... ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Based on the discussion I have seen, an escape mechanism for old text that really can not be processed otherwise is probably reasonable. However, if we are making an effort to retain the work that was done, my personal take is that the barrier to that escape mechanism has to be high enough that it is worth-while for folks to actually try to follow the community agreement. And I will happily leave it to the alwyer to tell us whose signoffs folks need. (While I have guesses, they are just that.) Joel John C Klensin wrote: Marshall, I completely agree. I also don't want to have us start down the path of rewriting text: most of what the IETF produces are technical documents, not works of fiction, and the odds significant rewriting screwing things up are high, perhaps a near-certainty. I also share your dislike for provisions whose validity we can even guess at until they end up in front of a court. I don't know what to do about that other that to rely on advice of Counsel, but that doesn't stop me from preferring this is a well-tested approach to we hope it will work out this way. But both your comments and that can't get it right issue just reinforce my view that we either need an escape mechanism for old text or need a model in which the Trust, not the submitters, take responsibility for text Contributed to the IETF under older rules. For the record, I don't know how to make the latter work (partially because, like you, I try to avoid simulating a lawyer) and am not proposing it. But, logically, it might be the other possibility here. john --On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 13:02 -0500 Marshall Eubanks t...@multicasttech.com wrote: Dear John; From your email : On Dec 17, 2008, at 12:16 PM, John C Klensin wrote: (iii) Rewrite the document to remove any copyright dependencies on text whose status is uncertain or for which rights transfers are significantly difficult. This is a dangerous solution, and may not be one at all. My mantra on these issues is : Engineers should not try and be lawyers. ... ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Joel M. Halpern wrote: Yes, having to get rights from folks is a pain. When the person is not longer available, the effect is more than discomfort. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
John C Klensin wrote: But both your comments and that can't get it right issue just reinforce my view that we either need an escape mechanism for old text or need a model in which the Trust, not the submitters, take responsibility for text Contributed to the IETF under older rules. For the record, I don't know how to make the latter work (partially because, like you, I try to avoid simulating a lawyer) and am not proposing it. I have held off proposing this latter view, because I've assumed it was obvious and that those expert in the legal issues rejected it. But from a practical standpoint, it is the most accurate representation of work done on IETF documents (within the working gorup structure.) That is: Working groups are part of the IETF and 'authors' of working group documents are acting as when writing IETF documents.agents of the IETF. While there might be underlying intellectual property owned by the companies that authors work for, the actual document is commissioned by, and copyright should be owned by, the IETF. Let me carry it further: When Erik Huizer and I wrote the first IETF Working Group Guidelines document, it was at our initiative. (Well, really, Erik's.) When it was adopted by the IETF, I automatically assumed that the IETF owned it. That is, after all, what we assert when outside technology is brought into the IETF and we insist that they are handing over change control. What is change control if not the authority to make changes to the document? So when Scott Bradner did the revision to the IETF Working Group Guidelines document the idea that he had a legal obligation to get our permission would have -- and certainly now does -- strike me as silly. That's me talking as a participant, about pragmatics, not me pretending to be a attorney, talking about copyright law. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Dave CROCKER wrote: What is change control if not the authority to make changes to the document? exactly. or to use copyright terminology, the right to make derivative works. Keith ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Fred Baker wrote: Silly question. Is this discussion more appropriate to ietf-ipr? Not any more. It was. But the result is what a number of different folk who are serious, long-term IETF contributors consider the current situation to be a basic crisis that prevents working on some existing docs. That's pretty serious, Fred, and most certainly not something that should simply be referred back to the relevant working group, with instructions to fix things. One could argue that ietf-ipr looked at this question for two years prior to submitting the new boilerplate, and by missing it made it clear that they weren't adequate to review. That said, there was also an IETF last call, and none of us detected the issue until Sam brought it up. This is at least the second time someone has tried to invoke the well, it went through IETF Last Call as some sort of presumably meaningful, reference, presumably with respect to shared blame or shared understanding or share something. We really need to stop making those observations, since they have nothing to do with fixing the current problem, except to warn us that whatever we did before didn't work adequately, in spite of extensive, diligent effort. But really - isn't this about IPR? Fred, when a team produces diligent effort and a failed product, is the usual management response to simply ask them to try again? That's not what I'm used to seeing in the real world and I'll bet it is not what anyone who work for a successful company is used to, either. Especially when the effort was by folks working outside of their area of expertise. Whatever it is that produced the current situation, we should try to avoid repeating it. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
John C Klensin wrote: The assumption that you made was ultimately that work done for or within the IETF was available for IETF use. ... The issues that drove 5378 have to do with non-IETF uses of text from these documents. For example, if someone on the other side of the world decided to create an Intranet Dead Horse Kicking Task Force and wanted to use significant text from the Working Group Guidelines, and use that material by copy, not by reference, would they have to ask for permission and, if so, from whom? My assumption was not that the work was available for IETF use. My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. The IETF was free to do whatever the hell if felt like with the work and I retained no rights. Use it. Give it to another group. Kill it. Whatever. Really. That's the cultural basis that I believe formed this community and informed participants in it. d/ ps. Well, to be more complete, I assumed that IETF ownership meant that the document was required to be publicly available and -- though I didn't know the term at the time -- there was public permission for derivative works by whoever felt like doing the deriving. -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Fred Baker wrote: Silly question. Is this discussion more appropriate to ietf-ipr? Not any more. It was. But the result is what a number of different folk who are serious, long-term IETF contributors consider the current situation to be a basic crisis that prevents working on some existing docs. That's pretty serious, Fred, and most certainly not something that should simply be referred back to the relevant working group, with instructions to fix things. One could argue that ietf-ipr looked at this question for two years prior to submitting the new boilerplate, and by missing it made it clear that they weren't adequate to review. That said, there was also an IETF last call, and none of us detected the issue until Sam brought it up. This is at least the second time someone has tried to invoke the well, it went through IETF Last Call as some sort of presumably meaningful, reference, presumably with respect to shared blame or shared understanding or share something. We really need to stop making those observations, since they have nothing to do with fixing the current problem, except to warn us that whatever we did before didn't work adequately, in spite of extensive, diligent effort. But really - isn't this about IPR? Fred, when a team produces diligent effort and a failed product, is the usual management response to simply ask them to try again? That's not what I'm used to seeing in the real world and I'll bet it is not what anyone who work for a successful company is used to, either. Especially when the effort was by folks working outside of their area of expertise. Whatever it is that produced the current situation, we should try to avoid repeating it. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 13:05 -0800 Dave CROCKER d...@dcrocker.net wrote: John C Klensin wrote: But both your comments and that can't get it right issue just reinforce my view that we either need an escape mechanism for old text or need a model in which the Trust, not the submitters, take responsibility for text Contributed to the IETF under older rules. For the record, I don't know how to make the latter work (partially because, like you, I try to avoid simulating a lawyer) and am not proposing it. I have held off proposing this latter view, because I've assumed it was obvious and that those expert in the legal issues rejected it. But from a practical standpoint, it is the most accurate representation of work done on IETF documents (within the working gorup structure.) ... An extreme (or not-so-extreme) version of this model is used by most of the traditional standards bodies. They use a formal membership or participation agreement to [try to] establish the principle that anything done for the standards body is work for hire (for the standards body) and hence belongs to that standards body from the moment it is written. It has been proposed to several iterations of IPR WGs as a mechanism that has considerable history if the WG really wants the copyrights and sublicensing rights in the hands of the IETF (which 5378 does, but nothing previous did). It has never gotten traction. I don't know (or don't recall) if that is because the WGs found the idea distasteful, because legal counsel didn't believe it would hold up without signed membership agreements, or a combination of the two. In fairness, if what became 5378 had been modeled on a work for hire and it all just belongs to the IETF structure, rather than the more elaborate and complex (IMO) system it uses, it wouldn't change the problem we have today in any significant way. Old documents would still not be covered by the new rules. If, like 5378, that hypothetical document contained a requirement that people get the new rights from prior contributors rather than somehow grandfathering their text, we would, I believe, still be having exactly the same discussion. I personally believe that the basic problem we are facing stems from a problem that the IETF understands extremely well --at least well enough to debate early, openly, and clearly-- for technical specifications. If there is an installed base (in this case, some 4000+ RFCs that were written under the old rules and assumptions), we don't generate a new specification that ignores the installed base or that assumes that a transition can occur on a flag day basis by retrofitting all earlier deployed implementations if they are to be used after it. The analogy is not exact, but it appear to me that it is exactly what 5378 attempts to do. Let me carry it further: When Erik Huizer and I wrote the first IETF Working Group Guidelines document, it was at our initiative. (Well, really, Erik's.) When it was adopted by the IETF, I automatically assumed that the IETF owned it. ... The following is an attempt to provide a simplified explanation of the relationship of 5378 to prior work, avoiding (for this note) any opinion about whether the 5378 model is a good or bad idea or how to get there in practice. It should also be considered to be covered by the usual disclaimers: IANAL, this is not either legal advice or a legal opinion and, most important, it is a quick summary that skips over details that I don't consider important but about which others might disagree. The assumption that you made was ultimately that work done for or within the IETF was available for IETF use. That assumption is consistent with both long-term practice and with explicit provisions in documents going back at least to 2026, the Note Well (at least before today), and so on. Pragmatically, if 5378 works, it doesn't change that at all. When Scott went to do his version, he probably had some moral obligation to consult you and Erik, to ask if you wanted to be involved directly, etc., but he was assumed to have no legal (copyright or otherwise) obligation because he was reusing IETF text for IETF purposes. The issues that drove 5378 have to do with non-IETF uses of text from these documents. For example, if someone on the other side of the world decided to create an Intranet Dead Horse Kicking Task Force and wanted to use significant text from the Working Group Guidelines, and use that material by copy, not by reference, would they have to ask for permission and, if so, from whom? Prior to 5378, the answer was that, if the folks intending this non-IETF use were being careful, they would have to track down and ask you, Erik, and Scott for permission. If they chose to not be careful, it would be their problem, not the IETF's (or the Trust's, or yours, etc.) If the document had been written for the first time post-5378, they would need to ask only the Trustees of the IETF Trust
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Randy Presuhn wrote: That is: Working groups are part of the IETF and 'authors' of working group documents are acting as when writing IETF documents.agents of the IETF. While I assume the missing word is editors fooey. thanks for catching that. very sorry i didn't. no, I meant to have it read are acting as agents of the IETF, when writing IETF documents. (For reference, I do not see the presence of the editor label as having any material impact on the nature of ownership of the text. So when Scott Bradner did the revision to the IETF Working Group Guidelines document the idea that he had a legal obligation to get our permission would have -- and certainly now does -- strike me as silly. Particularly since the permission to create derivative works and successor standards has been granted as part of the boilerplate for a long long time. I'm not sure whether it dates as far back as when we wrote that doc. But my real point is that it doesn't matter, in terms of what I, as an IETF participant, thought was the situation. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Hi - From: Dave CROCKER d...@dcrocker.net To: John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com Cc: IETF discussion list ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 1:05 PM Subject: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary ... That is: Working groups are part of the IETF and 'authors' of working group documents are acting as when writing IETF documents.agents of the IETF. While I assume the missing word is editors there might be underlying intellectual property owned by the companies that authors work for, the actual document is commissioned by, and copyright should be owned by, the IETF. AMEN! Let me carry it further: When Erik Huizer and I wrote the first IETF Working Group Guidelines document, it was at our initiative. (Well, really, Erik's.) When it was adopted by the IETF, I automatically assumed that the IETF owned it. That has always been my understanding regarding work I've done for the IETF. That is, after all, what we assert when outside technology is brought into the IETF and we insist that they are handing over change control. What is change control if not the authority to make changes to the document? Yup. So when Scott Bradner did the revision to the IETF Working Group Guidelines document the idea that he had a legal obligation to get our permission would have -- and certainly now does -- strike me as silly. Particularly since the permission to create derivative works and successor standards has been granted as part of the boilerplate for a long long time. That's me talking as a participant, about pragmatics, not me pretending to be a attorney, talking about copyright law. Ditto. Consequently, as a WG co-chair who wants his WG to finish up in this century, I read RFC 5378 section 5.3 as giving working groups what they need so they can ignore all this stuff about tracking down long-gone contributors, and that it's merely a re-incarnation of what has long been the intent behind the NOTE WELL text. One can easily imagine a situation in which a disgruntled party named as a contributor in an early version of work might refuse to give permission under some readings of an RFC 5378 regime, effectively killing the work. As John says, paraphrase is *not* a realistic option, especially with carefully-crafted WG compromise text. Randy ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 14:32 -0800 Dave CROCKER d...@dcrocker.net wrote: My assumption was not that the work was available for IETF use. My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. The IETF was free to do whatever the hell if felt like with the work and I retained no rights. Use it. Give it to another group. Kill it. Whatever. Really. That's the cultural basis that I believe formed this community and informed participants in it. ps. Well, to be more complete, I assumed that IETF ownership meant that the document was required to be publicly available and -- though I didn't know the term at the time -- there was public permission for derivative works by whoever felt like doing the deriving. Dave, this perspective and its implications have been debated by every incarnation of an IPR WG (or WG including IPR issues) that I can remember. Many of those debates have been both lengthy and heated. I'm not going to rehash either the variations on the position you state or the opposing one(s), but your summary above is, for better or worse, definitely not what the relevant documents from 2026 through 3978, versions of the Note Well, etc., say. And, if you are just now finding that out, it is more evidence that there is something seriously wrong with how we develop, review, and publicize specifications of this type. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Dave, On 2008-12-18 11:32, Dave CROCKER wrote: ... My assumption was not that the work was available for IETF use. Correct. My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. False. You never implicitly transferred ownership. The IETF was free to do whatever the hell if felt like with the work and I retained no rights. Use it. Give it to another group. Specifically, Give it to another group. was never covered until 5378. That's the entire problem. Brian Kill it. Whatever. Really. That's the cultural basis that I believe formed this community and informed participants in it. d/ ps. Well, to be more complete, I assumed that IETF ownership meant that the document was required to be publicly available and -- though I didn't know the term at the time -- there was public permission for derivative works by whoever felt like doing the deriving. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Dave CROCKER wrote: My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. The IETF was free to do whatever the hell if felt like with the work and I retained no rights. Use it. Give it to another group. Kill it. Whatever. My understanding was that IETF had a non-exclusive, transferable license to my rights to the work as creator, including the right to make derivative works. But that's not the same thing as IETF owning the work. Keith ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Hi - From: John C Klensin j...@jck.com To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com; IETF discussion list ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 2:40 PM Subject: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary ... What gives your WG the ability to function is 5.4, where the Trust gives back to the IETF participants what the Trust received under 5.1 and 5.3. But they can't give back what they don't have, so, if your WG is required to derive its permission to do work from 5.4 and a previous author takes a walk rather than making the 5.1 guarantees and 5.3 transfers _to the Trust_... ... Ok, so if my understanding was incorrect, at what point must we stop work until this is corrected? (I can virtually guarantee that we will not get explicit permission from every individual named in an acknowledgement section of one of the antecedants of the documents we're updating. Paraphrase the whole thing? Ain't gonna happen.) a) We cannot submit any more I-Ds until this is fixed b) We can continue to submit I-Ds, but cannot hand off to the IESG c) We can hand off to the IESG, but not do IETF last call d) We can do IETF last call, but not hand it over to the RFC editor e) We can hand it over to the RFC editor, but not actually publish I'd be willing to wager that, in its current mood, the WG would simply disband rather than deal with any of these. z) We stop updating our documents, hand over an existing I-D without the offensive IPR language, and hope that the IESG requires no changes, and use RFC errata to deal with the (minor) problems that we know exist in that I-D. Somehow this seems totally bogus, since the authors were all editors working under the direction of the working group to produce a work for the working group. If anything, the transfer should be from the WG (or the IETF) to the trust, not from the people who were high- stress typists for the WG. Likewise, the various contributors whose words went into the collaborative blender were doing so under the long-standing NOTE WELL provisions, so getting their permission again seems, well, pointless. Randy ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Brian E Carpenter wrote: On 2008-12-18 11:32, Dave CROCKER wrote: My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. False. You never implicitly transferred ownership. Yes I did. As I say, that was the culture. Scott didn't have to come to Erik or me and ask permission, and he didn't even have to think about whether he was required to. That was the culture. Law often follows culture, since culture creates established practice. I do realize that that was a long time ago and that we certainly have many participants holding different views. I was reviewing the history on the general belief that a crisis of the current sort can often be aided by taking a fresh look at first principles. But since I've now had a number of public and private exchanges with folk who have been diligent participants in this topic and since none has seemed to understand -- nevermind embrace -- the line of discussion I've tried to raise, I'll go back to my observer status and let the folks who are putting the real effort into this continue on. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 15:23 -0800 Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com wrote: Hi - From: John C Klensin j...@jck.com To: Randy Presuhn randy_pres...@mindspring.com; IETF discussion list ietf@ietf.org Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 2:40 PM Subject: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary ... What gives your WG the ability to function is 5.4, where the Trust gives back to the IETF participants what the Trust received under 5.1 and 5.3. But they can't give back what they don't have, so, if your WG is required to derive its permission to do work from 5.4 and a previous author takes a walk rather than making the 5.1 guarantees and 5.3 transfers _to the Trust_... ... Ok, so if my understanding was incorrect, at what point must we stop work until this is corrected? Here is where you are on your own. In spite of saying that it sets up binding legal agreements, RFC 5378 says that it isn't legal advice (about what those agreements mean or anything else) and that you need to find your own. While some people have offered the opinion that, since no one is likely to sue, you can safely just ignore the specifics of that document and proceed as usual, I assume that no one has promised that is legal advice on which you can rely either. Since I have already said it on another list, I can tell you that I've been advised by my attorney to not post any document for which I'm quite certain that all prior contributors have made 5378-compliant transfers to the IETF. But he is far more aware of my circumstances, circumstances that are almost certainly not the same as yours, and what he has told me is definitely not legal advice to you or on which you should rely. As to dates, opinions about that seem to differ. The WG decided to not incorporate a date (or description of triggering events) in the text of 5378, so you can't find a lot of help there. There is an an analysis of the date issue in draft-klensin-rfc5378var-02a.txt. Since it lists around a half-dozen possibilities based on common sense understanding of the situation (again, not a legal opinion), you should go read it rather than my trying to paraphrase, but I believe the answer is sometime between 10 November and tomorrow. Some attorneys who have been consulted have mumbled something that sounded like depends on when a reasonable person would have known about the new rules, but mumbling definitely does not constitute legal advice. (I can virtually guarantee that we will not get explicit permission from every individual named in an acknowledgement section of one of the antecedants of the documents we're updating. Paraphrase the whole thing? Ain't gonna happen.) a) We cannot submit any more I-Ds until this is fixed b) We can continue to submit I-Ds, but cannot hand off to the IESG ... A common-sense reading of 5378 (not legal advice, etc., etc.) says that it applies to all Contributions and that you aren't supposed to be making one of those unless it conforms to the requirements of 5378. The definition of a Contribution [RFC 5378, Section 1(a)] is pretty much the same as it was in 3978 and earlier and very explicitly includes text intended for posting in I-Ds. I can't give you a legal opinion about what you can or cannot do, but it is fairly clear that the cutoff point applies to I-Ds and not some later step in the standards process. I'd be willing to wager that, in its current mood, the WG would simply disband rather than deal with any of these. That is the case that scares me, that prompted me to put up an I-D posing an alternative in the hope that we could swiftly come to consensus about it (or some other alternative), and get it implemented and deployed before Bad Things Happen. And WGs shutting down is about the worst thing I can imagine happening to the IETF (others may, of course, be more imaginative). z) We stop updating our documents, hand over an existing I-D without the offensive IPR language, and hope that the IESG requires no changes, and use RFC errata to deal with the (minor) problems that we know exist in that I-D. As I read 5378 (and understand the comments made by one of the IPR WG document authors, the IETF Chair, and a Trustee or two), the fact of handing that document over to the IESG would make it subject to 5378 and would constitute an assertion on someone's part --perhaps yours as WG Chair-- that all of the 5378 hoops had been properly jumped through. I would hope that, if the IESG takes 5378 seriously, they would modify the submission Checklist to say that explicitly if they have not already done so. (I don't have a clue where it would leave us if the IESG decided it didn't want to take 5378 seriously, unless they translated that into immediately moving it to historic, which I gather they don't believe they have the authority to do.) So that escape would probably not work either. Somehow this seems totally bogus, since the authors
RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Dave Crocker wrote: That was the culture. Law often follows culture, since culture creates established practice. I hope you're right. May I ask: Is there anyone on this list who is asserting a current copyright interest in any IETF RFC--on your own behalf or on behalf of your company--that would encumber the freedom of any IETF participants to copy, create derivative works, and distribute that RFC in accordance with IETF culture? On what basis do you assert that current copyright interest in those RFCs? Have you registered that copyright? Is that copyright interest sole or joint with any other entity, including other contributors or the IETF Trust itself? I'm not interested to hear about hypothetical situations. I would like to know if there are any actual claims of copyright ownership that people here are even considering to assert against IETF's complete freedom to act and establish functional Internet standards. /Larry -Original Message- From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Dave CROCKER Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 3:34 PM To: Brian E Carpenter Cc: IETF discussion list Subject: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary Brian E Carpenter wrote: On 2008-12-18 11:32, Dave CROCKER wrote: My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. False. You never implicitly transferred ownership. Yes I did. As I say, that was the culture. Scott didn't have to come to Erik or me and ask permission, and he didn't even have to think about whether he was required to. That was the culture. Law often follows culture, since culture creates established practice. I do realize that that was a long time ago and that we certainly have many participants holding different views. I was reviewing the history on the general belief that a crisis of the current sort can often be aided by taking a fresh look at first principles. But since I've now had a number of public and private exchanges with folk who have been diligent participants in this topic and since none has seemed to understand -- nevermind embrace -- the line of discussion I've tried to raise, I'll go back to my observer status and let the folks who are putting the real effort into this continue on. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 16:56 -0800 Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: Dave Crocker wrote: That was the culture. Law often follows culture, since culture creates established practice. I hope you're right. May I ask: Is there anyone on this list who is asserting a current copyright interest in any IETF RFC--on your own behalf or on behalf of your company--that would encumber the freedom of any IETF participants to copy, create derivative works, and distribute that RFC in accordance with IETF culture? ... Larry, So that we don't get assertions about either universal negatives or about people who are assumed to give up the right to claim copyright interest as a consequence of not answering your question,... Your question does not distinguish between uses by IETF participants for IETF-related purposes (e.g., standards development) and uses by people who participate in the IETF for purposes not directly related to IETF work (e.g., insertion into programs or their documentation whether conforming to those standards or not). Was the failure to make that distinction intentional? If it was intentional, is your question intended as a back-door way to reopen the questions about whether the IETF intends unlimited use of its material, with or without acknowledgements and citation and regardless of purpose, that the IPR WG resolved in the negative? Finally, when you ask this question, are you asking as an individual participant in the IETF process or as an attorney who might be called upon to advise one or more clients on the subject of dealing with the IETF and/or IETF-related IPR? If the latter, would you mind identifying those clients and any other interest you might have in the answers other than idle curiousity? thanks, john p.s. Even if it were clearly true at one time, which some would dispute, Dave's assertion about the present IETF culture is controversial given, at least, the IETF's history and positions about IPR and copyright over the last decade or more. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Reply below. /Larry -Original Message- From: John C Klensin [mailto:john-i...@jck.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 7:02 PM To: lro...@rosenlaw.com; 'IETF discussion list' Subject: RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary --On Wednesday, 17 December, 2008 16:56 -0800 Lawrence Rosen lro...@rosenlaw.com wrote: Dave Crocker wrote: That was the culture. Law often follows culture, since culture creates established practice. I hope you're right. May I ask: Is there anyone on this list who is asserting a current copyright interest in any IETF RFC--on your own behalf or on behalf of your company--that would encumber the freedom of any IETF participants to copy, create derivative works, and distribute that RFC in accordance with IETF culture? ... Larry, So that we don't get assertions about either universal negatives or about people who are assumed to give up the right to claim copyright interest as a consequence of not answering your question,... [LR:] Universal negatives? I remember at least one email here yesterday or today where someone cavalierly stated that he claimed a copyright in an unnamed IETF spec. I wanted to flesh that claim out. Perhaps that person will have the courage to speak up precisely. That's the problem around here. People worry to death about IP claims that nobody is willing to actually make. People develop IP policies that solve nonexistent problems (such as the code vs. text debate) and, by doing so, add further confusion, evidenced by this current problem. I refuse to be cowed by ambiguous claims of IP, particularly copyrights that seek to inhibit the development of *functional* industry standards. It is even worse than ambiguously claiming that there might be patented technology here but then refusing to identify or license it, because copyright lasts for 100 years, not just 20. I can outwait the patent IP claims, but technology will be hostage for my entire lifetime to the copyrights. That can't be justified. Your question does not distinguish between uses by IETF participants for IETF-related purposes (e.g., standards development) and uses by people who participate in the IETF for purposes not directly related to IETF work (e.g., insertion into programs or their documentation whether conforming to those standards or not). Was the failure to make that distinction intentional? [LR:] Yes. Both are absolutely essential for implementation of open standards. If it was intentional, is your question intended as a back-door way to reopen the questions about whether the IETF intends unlimited use of its material, with or without acknowledgements and citation and regardless of purpose, that the IPR WG resolved in the negative? [LR:] Yes, since the front door has been closed. My question is definitely: Is anyone retaining a copyright in such functional materials with the intent to prevent unlimited use by *anyone*? Please don't assert that this need be without acknowledgements and citation. I've never said that. As for regardless of purpose, as long as the purpose is to obtain a specific standard functionality and thus the words are not subject to copyright, try and stop me, regardless of what the IPR WG says. Finally, when you ask this question, are you asking as an individual participant in the IETF process or as an attorney who might be called upon to advise one or more clients on the subject of dealing with the IETF and/or IETF-related IPR? If the latter, would you mind identifying those clients and any other interest you might have in the answers other than idle curiousity? [LR:] I am asking as an attorney and IETF participant (we're all individuals here, I've been told, with individual opinions) who is anxious to understand why so many people on here are worried about copyright infringement and are seeking to protect copyrights they don't even have the honesty to claim outright. I care about IETF specifications in this email thread, not about any specific clients. As to whether I might represent one or more clients on this issue, my lips are sealed. thanks, john p.s. Even if it were clearly true at one time, which some would dispute, Dave's assertion about the present IETF culture is controversial given, at least, the IETF's history and positions about IPR and copyright over the last decade or more. [LR:] So if the culture is controversial, and the process we've inadequately developed is controversial, perhaps we should actually consider the law. Which is what I'm trying to do. Unfortunately what people are doing here is speculating about hypothetical situations and refusing to declare their real interests in promoting restricted copyright licenses for functional specifications. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Lawrence Rosen wrote: That's the problem around here. People worry to death about IP claims that nobody is willing to actually make. People develop IP policies that solve nonexistent problems (such as the code vs. text debate) and, by doing so, add further confusion, evidenced by this current problem. This should not be surprising. The vast majority of us are not lawyers, and therefore we don't have the kind of wisdom that a lawyer has - in particular the kind of wisdom that tells an experienced lawyer which kinds of threats are actually worth worrying about, and more importantly, which ones are not. To most of us, the law - especially intellectual property law - is a threat that we don't understand. But we've seen it do considerable harm to our profession, and many of us have been personally burned by it. So we can't afford to ignore the problem. And while we also have some difficulty knowing how much to trust IETF's counsel on these matters, few of us are willing/able to pay for our own legal advice in these matters. Even if we did, it's not clear that we'd get consistent answers from our individual lawyers. So in order to get rough consensus among ourselves, we'd still be trying to protect ourselves against threats that many would feel were nonexistent. I'm not sure what to do about any of this. Keith ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Larry, your email sounded dangerously close to suggesting that it might be ok to break the copyright law because no one would object to it. Is that what you are suggesting? On Dec 17, 2008, at 5:56 PM, Lawrence Rosen wrote: Dave Crocker wrote: That was the culture. Law often follows culture, since culture creates established practice. I hope you're right. May I ask: Is there anyone on this list who is asserting a current copyright interest in any IETF RFC--on your own behalf or on behalf of your company--that would encumber the freedom of any IETF participants to copy, create derivative works, and distribute that RFC in accordance with IETF culture? On what basis do you assert that current copyright interest in those RFCs? Have you registered that copyright? Is that copyright interest sole or joint with any other entity, including other contributors or the IETF Trust itself? I'm not interested to hear about hypothetical situations. I would like to know if there are any actual claims of copyright ownership that people here are even considering to assert against IETF's complete freedom to act and establish functional Internet standards. /Larry -Original Message- From: ietf-boun...@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-boun...@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Dave CROCKER Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 3:34 PM To: Brian E Carpenter Cc: IETF discussion list Subject: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary Brian E Carpenter wrote: On 2008-12-18 11:32, Dave CROCKER wrote: My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. False. You never implicitly transferred ownership. Yes I did. As I say, that was the culture. Scott didn't have to come to Erik or me and ask permission, and he didn't even have to think about whether he was required to. That was the culture. Law often follows culture, since culture creates established practice. I do realize that that was a long time ago and that we certainly have many participants holding different views. I was reviewing the history on the general belief that a crisis of the current sort can often be aided by taking a fresh look at first principles. But since I've now had a number of public and private exchanges with folk who have been diligent participants in this topic and since none has seemed to understand -- nevermind embrace -- the line of discussion I've tried to raise, I'll go back to my observer status and let the folks who are putting the real effort into this continue on. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Keith Moore mo...@network-heretics.com writes: Dave CROCKER wrote: My assumption was that the IETF owned the work. Pure and simple. The IETF was free to do whatever the hell if felt like with the work and I retained no rights. Use it. Give it to another group. Kill it. Whatever. My understanding was that IETF had a non-exclusive, transferable license to my rights to the work as creator, including the right to make derivative works. But that's not the same thing as IETF owning the work. Right. One reason RFC 5378 is drafted the way it is, is that the IETF didn't used to have the right to sub-license contributions to others. If contributors would have licensed all their contributions to anyone instead of to the Trust, the problem would be reduced. The second step in solving the problem would be to allow contributions to contain material with separate licenses, to allow for older IETF contributions. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
Material comments: - Section 3: RFC 5378 expected the date on which 5378 was effective to be set by the Trust (section 2.1), and explicitly did not want to cast into RFC stone the procedure by which the changeover date was determined. - I disagree with the decision to allow *all* of a submission, including new text, to be 3978-boilerplated. As I've said before, my preferred resolution mechanism is to have a mechanism available (probably front-page disclaimer + details in the Contributors section) for listing pre-5378 sources from which material was copied without 5378 permission being granted by the authors. I believe the continued production of material that is licensed under 3978 only will be long-term harmful to the state of the IETF's IPR confusion. Harald John C Klensin wrote: Hi. I've just reposted this draft as draft-klensin-rfc5378var-01.txt. I didn't removing the material I indicated I was going to remove because this version follows too quickly on the previous one. There are only two sets of changes, but the first seemed sufficiently important to be worth a quick update: (1) Alfred Hoenes caught several places in which I had transposed digits or otherwise fouled up RFC numbers to which I was making reference. This type of work is sufficiently confusing without that sort of stupid problem, for which I apologize -- I thought I had proofread it carefully enough but obviously did not. They have been fixed. (2) I realized that it was necessary for completeness to un-obsolete 3948 and 4748 if they were going to be referenced, or material from them picked up and copied into, documents, so I have inserted a paragraph to take care of that. Anyone who has successful read the -00 version and understood it can safely ignore this one. Anyone who has not yet read -00, or who tried to read it and was confused by the numbering errors, may find this version more helpful. Comments are, of course, welcome on either one. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
(in the interest of efficiency, I'm going to respond to Harald's and Simon's comments in a single note and pick up one of Hector's remarks in the process) Harald, --On Tuesday, 16 December, 2008 09:53 +0100 Harald Alvestrand har...@alvestrand.no wrote: Material comments: - Section 3: RFC 5378 expected the date on which 5378 was effective to be set by the Trust (section 2.1), and explicitly did not want to cast into RFC stone the procedure by which the changeover date was determined. I understand that. I even believe that the WG decision in that regard, reflected in 5378, was correct in that regard. But we have ended up in a situation in which reasonable people, apparently even practicing attorney-type reasonable people, disagree on the actual effective changeover date and its validity. Except as an example of we don't do this at all well (see below), why that happened is not particularly interesting compared to the importance of properly identifying and solving, or at least working around, the problem. - I disagree with the decision to allow *all* of a submission, including new text, to be 3978-boilerplated. As I've said before, my preferred resolution mechanism is to have a mechanism available (probably front-page disclaimer + details in the Contributors section) for listing pre-5378 sources from which material was copied without 5378 permission being granted by the authors. I believe the continued production of material that is licensed under 3978 only will be long-term harmful to the state of the IETF's IPR confusion. I tried to say this in the document, but obviously not clearly enough. I believe that the right long-term strategy is some sort of hybrid in which earlier text is somehow grandfathered and newer text falls under the newer rules. That is desirable not only for the reason you cite but because, as Simon points out, 3978 has its own set of problems that we should not perpetuate any longer or more than necessary. _However_ there are two problems with a hybrid strategy. The first is that I see almost no chance that we could develop that necessary model, plan, and documentation quickly and get it right (see below). I believe that, if 5378 is taken seriously and is the only permitted posting mode after today, that a number of document and WG efforts are simply going to come to a halt until we get a workaround in place. The just use 3978 until we get this sorted out model of the I-D is a proposal for that (I hope temporary) workaround; it is not a suggestion for a permanent solution. The second is an issue on which I think we need advice from the Trustees and from Counsel and then time to consider and discuss that advice. To a first approximation, the IPR in a document completely created under 5378 rules is extremely easy to understand and administer: the Trust owns the thing and all rights to use it, even for IETF development purposes, derive from licenses granted by the Trust. Similarly, and again to a first approximation, the IPR in the document completely created under 3978 or its predecessors is easy to understand and administer: the IETF can use the document any way it needs/wants to, anyone can copy, distribute, etc., and anyone with another use must seek out the authors for permission. A document that contains both 3978 (or earlier) material and 5378 material is a much more complex proposition. Obviously, the Trust can't grant rights it doesn't have. Probably a grant from the Trust that says you can do X with any part of the document we control, but for anything else you have to have to contact the authors, and we can't tell you which is which is the worst of both worlds... one in which anyone who is being conservative will feel a need to obtain both a license from the Trust _and_ licenses from the authors/ Contributors. Does that mean that, to do a hybrid document, we will have to label each paragraph with its authorship/ 5378 status? I don't know, and that is where consultation with Counsel is needed. One we get those answers, we can start figuring out the tradeoffs and what we _really_ want.But I am certain we won't be able to figure that out and get it right this week, or even this year. Simon, --On Tuesday, 16 December, 2008 15:03 +0100 Simon Josefsson si...@josefsson.org wrote: ... Thanks for trying to do something about this problem. I've read the -01 document. It describes a solution that would be very far from a good copyright situation -- even further away than RFC 5378 alone, given that RFC 3978 is seriously flawed in some ways. However, I think your draft is likely to be one of few approaches that can gain consensus quickly enough to be an effective solution to the problem you describe. It could be a stop-gap measure for the next year or so, until better copyright policies can be developed. That is really all I intend -- something that can get us out of this hole, that could be adopted and implemented
Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
Cullen Jennings flu...@cisco.com writes: I believe it would allow us to continue work where the text had been provided under the 3978 rules. Without something like this, I don't know how I can submit new versions of the WG internet drafts that I am an co-author of. I can not even figure out who are all the people that contributed significant text to the WG drafts much less imagine how I will get permission from all of them to submit the draft under the the 5378 rules. Question. It is my understanding/assumption that the ONLY parties that one must clearance from are the actual listed authors of the document. Specifically, one does NOT need to go back to everyone who might have contributed text. That, at least, is how we seem to have been operating for a long time, i.e, it is only the listed authors that matter. Having said that, things might be murkier than that if one looks at an acknowledgment section to find everyone who might have contributed significant text. I.e., when incorporating comments from individuals in WGs, those contributions are covered by the NOTE WELL. Does the NOTE WELL also need to be extended to cover the expanded rights case? Please say no! Thomas ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Cullen Jennings wrote: On Dec 12, 2008, at 1:07 PM, Russ Housley wrote: This was the consensus of the IPR WG and the IETF, I doubt the IPR WG really fully thought about this or understood it. If someone who was deeply involved can provide definitive evidence of this one way or the other that would be great. I am pretty sure this was not widely understood when it was IETF LC and I very confident it was not understood by the IESG when when they approved it. Indeed. But more importantly, this sub-thread naturally and inevitably reduces down to an infinite, entirely unproductive finger-pointing game. We have a reality that the new IPR rules are fundamentally problematic. Prior to their imposition, we had a functioning system. Now we don't. And the only thing that changed was imposition of the new rules. Nothing else happened. The proposals are mostly about adding another layer of 'fix' to what was supposed, itself, to be an incremental fix. The odds that we will get that additional layer wrong are demonstrably high. We should, instead, re-invoke the previous rules, until we figure out how to make the correct changes. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Dave, --On Tuesday, 16 December, 2008 10:26 -0800 Dave CROCKER d...@dcrocker.net wrote: Indeed. But more importantly, this sub-thread naturally and inevitably reduces down to an infinite, entirely unproductive finger-pointing game. For various reasons, I don't believe that game is infinite. I believe that we all had the opportunity to identify these problems during Last Call or earlier and that no one did a careful enough review. That means that the finger points to either everyone participating in the IETF or to the fundamental process we use to review and approve this type of documents. Neither is infinite, but it makes the exercise even more non-productive. We have a reality that the new IPR rules are fundamentally problematic. Prior to their imposition, we had a functioning system. Now we don't. And the only thing that changed was imposition of the new rules. Nothing else happened. The proposals are mostly about adding another layer of 'fix' to what was supposed, itself, to be an incremental fix. The odds that we will get that additional layer wrong are demonstrably high. And that is precisely why my I-D turns things into a choice between new rules and old rules, based only on the conclusion of the submitter about what is important... and why it does not attempt to fix 5378. I agree with you about the odds of getting an additional layer right, especially so if we try to do it quickly. We should, instead, re-invoke the previous rules, until we figure out how to make the correct changes. Yes, just suspend 5378 until we get this sorted out and then, if necessary, repeal it and start over did occur to me. I tried to suggest last week that the IAOC and Trustees figure out a way to do just that, if necessary generating a pro-forma appeal of something that would permit the IESG to take an equivalent action. If I correctly understand the responses we received, that wasn't believed to be possible. The Trustees have advice of Counsel (who is also a co-author of 5378) and I don't in that matter, so, if they concluded that they couldn't figure out a way to defer 5378 and reinvoke the previous rules, I think we need to accept that and move on. Of course, we could generate an I-D whose only substantive text was either move 5378 to historic and un-obsolete 3978 and 4749 or suspend application of 5378 until some specified condition happens. I know how to write the first. I don't know how to write the second, but maybe someone else does. I took the path that my I-D specifies because I concluded that we have gotten into a place in which re-invoking the old rules is not possible. With the usual IANAL disclaimers, it appears to me that we are in the following situation: * Documents have been posted with RFC 5378 language. * At least some of the Trustees believe, presumably on advice of Counsel, that RFC 5378 has been in effect since November 10, that everything done in the IETF since November 10 is covered by it, including everything that happened during IETF 73, and that 3978 became obsolete and of no effect on that date. It appears that all RFCs posted after that date carry the 5378 language. While some of us have a bit of trouble with the logic on which that belief is based, we know that legal logic is sometimes different from normal logic and assume that any controversy about 5378 effectiveness would not be resolved until settled by a court. I can't speak for others, but I don't want to go near that solution if it can be avoided. * Ignoring all of the non-IETF uses for the moment, RFC 5378 is not a linear descendant of 3978 and its predecessors, but a change in direction from authors grant rights to the IETF and its participants to authors grant rights to the IETF Trust, which then grants rights back to IETF participants so we can do work. If we suspend or repeal 5378 to re-invoke the previous rules, it appears to me that any documents covered by the 5378 rules fall into a strange never-never land in which the IETF may have _no_ rights to them at all. Remembering that set of documents contains anything from several RFCs and I-Ds to all of IETF history since before IETF 73, that is an unattractive situation, to put it mildly. * One could argue that everything published or contributed between November 10 and now is still covered by the (old) Note Well and hence that the old rules are still in effect in parallel to the rules of 5378, i.e., that Contributors are making both the old grant direct to IETF participants and the new grant to the IETF Trust. That position would be a little inconsistent with the assertion that 3978
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
John == John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com writes: We have a reality that the new IPR rules are fundamentally problematic. Prior to their imposition, we had a functioning system. Now we don't. And the only thing that changed was imposition of the new rules. Nothing else happened. The proposals are mostly about adding another layer of 'fix' to what was supposed, itself, to be an incremental fix. The odds that we will get that additional layer wrong are demonstrably high. John And that is precisely why my I-D turns things into a choice John between new rules and old rules, based only on the John conclusion of the submitter about what is important... and John why it does not attempt to fix 5378. I agree with you John about the odds of getting an additional layer right, John especially so if we try to do it quickly. For what it is worth, I as an individual support the new rules, and believe Russ gave me a fine answer. I would not support turning this into a choice. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
At 13:41 16-12-2008, Sam Hartman wrote: For what it is worth, I as an individual support the new rules, and believe Russ gave me a fine answer. You asked a good question. I would not support turning this into a choice. According to a message [1] posted by the IETF Chair, the updated boilerplate is required as from December 16. There was a Last Call on December 16 for draft-ietf-sieve-managesieve. There is a sub-section in that I-D that is similar to text found in RFCs on the Standard Track. Previously, reuse of text as part of the Standard Process wasn't an issue. One could even argue that the reuse of some text falls under the doctrine of fair use. If I were to send comments pointing out that some parts of the document are not in line with what RFC 5378 prescribes, the IESG may have to determine whether BCP 78 and BCP 79 were followed even if the IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights. 1. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg05509.html Regards, -sm ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
I have a very different view of this situation, and disagree wstrongly with John's recommended fix (or the equivalent fix of completely rolling back 5378 and 5377.) First and foremost, it should be kept in ming by anyone reading this that the IPR working was convened by the then IETF chair, and continued by succeeding chairs because there were problems that actually needed to be fixed. There are things that the community considered (and presumably still does consider) either necessary or important that are not properly addressed by the earlier documents. This varied between a lack of clarity in some areas, and a lack of ability to perform necessary actions in other areas. The working group was not convened just because we wanted to, or even because we thought we could make things better. If it had not appeared that there were significant problems, I for one would have taken the much easier course and just said leave it alone. And I am quite confident I am not alone. Secondly, giving people a choice of terms is basically going to create confusion. For example, one of the issues raised in the working group was that our previous rights grant appeared not to properly allow folks to modify code. And it required them to include things in used code that made it hard to use that code in various contexts. We want to see implementations. We want to see accurate, interoperable implementations. Using the code and tables from various RFC is somewhere between necessary and and desirable. But, if we assume that the folks who were concerned were right, then if we give everyone a choice, anyone trying to right code using our tables, etc has to figure out what rights they are being granted to use any given RFC or I-D. Yes, there are those who argued that there was no problem. However, the WG concluded that there was at the very least significant confusion, and probably an actual problem. Yes, having to get rights from folks is a pain. But if we are not willing to push to do that, then we might as well consider that the rights granted to the IETF are locked in stone forever, and can never be upgraded, because it will never happen. It should be understood also that some folks actually wanted us to go further than we did in 5377. 5378 and 5377 represent the best compromise we could work out. The community is certainly free to decide that it doesn't want to do that. While some folks who were there say that they feel not enough attention was paid to this issue, it is the case that we did discuss at least some of the impact, and none of what turned out to be needed surprised me. Yours, Joel M. Halpern ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
AJ Jaghori ciscowo...@gmail.com writes: Modifying an author's original work without specified permission; regardless of new findings, constitutes a copyright infringement. Sure, but the old RFC copyright license (e.g., RFC 2026 and RFC 3978) gave IETF participants the necessary rights to allow modifications of earlier IETF work within the IETF standard process. The new one doesn't, and the consequences of that situation is what's discussed. /Simon On 12/13/08, Christian Huitema huit...@windows.microsoft.com wrote: You can improve any technology you want, modulo IPR -- that's not the point here. The problem is taking existing copyrighted text and using it as a base for describing your technology. That's indeed the problem we stumbled upon years ago. Suppose that a contributor has written a complete description of technology X, getting it published as a 100 pages RFC. A remarkable feat, and a great contribution to the community. A few years letter, the working group realizes that they like the technology, but would like to change a couple options. That normally translates into changing a paragraph or two, resulting in a new RFC, more than 90% identical to the previous one. Suppose now that for whatever reasons, the original author disagrees with the changes, or with the new management of the working group, or with the new editor. People are human, these things do happen. IANAL, but my understanding at the time was that the original copyright still applied to the original text, and that the working group would be left with only bad options. They could issue a delta RFC that only contained the modifications, but that is somewhat confusing for the readers. Or they could undertake a complete rewriting of the standard, but that takes a long time and is also prone to errors and confusion. This is very much why we got the statement on copyrights in RFC 1602, in 1996. You will notice that copyrights were only mentioned as something we might need to worry about later in the appendix of the previous rules, RFC 1310 published in 1992. -- Christian Huitema ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Cullen Jennings flu...@cisco.com writes: On Dec 12, 2008, at 1:07 PM, Russ Housley wrote: This was the consensus of the IPR WG and the IETF, I doubt the IPR WG really fully thought about this or understood it. If someone who was deeply involved can provide definitive evidence of this one way or the other that would be great. I am pretty sure this was not widely understood when it was IETF LC and I very confident it was not understood by the IESG when when they approved it. I agree. I don't recall discussions that the intention was that the documents would require IETF participants to contact earlier IETF contributors about transferring rights to the Trust. I believe the intention was to maintain status quo in this area, i.e., to allow IETF participants to freely re-use IETF documents within the IETF standards process. Given the complexity of the documents, I'm not surprised there are unforeseen consequences like this. Unfortunately, the problems I brought up with the old copyright policy did not lead to discussions of how to reduce complexity. Instead, more complexity was added to work around identified problems. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
Hi. In an attempt to get this discussion unstuck and to provide a way forward for those of us whose reading of 5378 (or advice from counsel) have convinced us that we cannot post most documents that contain older text written by others under the new rules, I've posted a new I-D, draft-klensin-rfc5378var-00.txt. It would be very helpful if people would actually read the draft before commenting on it -- it isn't very long, and the key section that contains the new procedure (Section 4) is under 40 lines of text -- but the intent is to make sure we don't get stuck or that we get unstuck as quickly as possible. While the draft reviews the history and context of the situation, the elevator summary of the proposal is that, if an author/ contributor is working on a document that contains old text and concludes that he or she cannot reasonably comply with the provisions of 5378, then it is permitted to post the document with IPR rules that are strictly in conformance with RFC 3978. In deference to the ever-patient and underappreciated maintainers of tools, I note that this would require no changes other than disabling (or later un-enabling) the 5378-only check that I assume the Secretariat is going to turn on tomorrow. A different possibility would be to create an exception procedure in which such an author would have to request an exemption from the IESG or the Trustees (or for the IESG to conclude that the variance procedure of RFC 2026 could be used for these cases). My personal opinion is that those approaches would add to the workload of people who are already too busy and further bog us down. This draft is not intended as a long term solution. Long-term, I think we will need to revise 5378 to make explicit provision for new documents that contain older material for which having the IETF Trust obtain additional rights is not feasible. The draft discusses that situation further. But I don't believe that we should even attempt to make that sort of change quickly, especially since I am very sensitive to Simon's comment from earlier today that I would generalize as every time a new issue comes up, we respond by making things more complex and harder to understand and work with. So, in the short term, I hope this document will either provide a basis for the new BCP that Russ indicated that the Trustees need or at least can focus enough discussion that someone else can generate such a BCP draft. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On Dec 15, 2008, at 5:14 AM, Simon Josefsson wrote: AJ Jaghori ciscowo...@gmail.com writes: Modifying an author's original work without specified permission; regardless of new findings, constitutes a copyright infringement. Sure, but the old RFC copyright license (e.g., RFC 2026 and RFC 3978) gave IETF participants the necessary rights to allow modifications of earlier IETF work within the IETF standard process. The new one doesn't, and the consequences of that situation is what's discussed. My understanding (IANAL and other warning apply) is that the new license does do this, inside the IETF. It's grants to other organizations which is the issue. Regards Marshall /Simon On 12/13/08, Christian Huitema huit...@windows.microsoft.com wrote: You can improve any technology you want, modulo IPR -- that's not the point here. The problem is taking existing copyrighted text and using it as a base for describing your technology. That's indeed the problem we stumbled upon years ago. Suppose that a contributor has written a complete description of technology X, getting it published as a 100 pages RFC. A remarkable feat, and a great contribution to the community. A few years letter, the working group realizes that they like the technology, but would like to change a couple options. That normally translates into changing a paragraph or two, resulting in a new RFC, more than 90% identical to the previous one. Suppose now that for whatever reasons, the original author disagrees with the changes, or with the new management of the working group, or with the new editor. People are human, these things do happen. IANAL, but my understanding at the time was that the original copyright still applied to the original text, and that the working group would be left with only bad options. They could issue a delta RFC that only contained the modifications, but that is somewhat confusing for the readers. Or they could undertake a complete rewriting of the standard, but that takes a long time and is also prone to errors and confusion. This is very much why we got the statement on copyrights in RFC 1602, in 1996. You will notice that copyrights were only mentioned as something we might need to worry about later in the appendix of the previous rules, RFC 1310 published in 1992. -- Christian Huitema ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
John, I like the draft. It looks like a fairly pragmatic approach to solve the problem. I believe it would allow us to continue work where the text had been provided under the 3978 rules. Without something like this, I don't know how I can submit new versions of the WG internet drafts that I am an co-author of. I can not even figure out who are all the people that contributed significant text to the WG drafts much less imagine how I will get permission from all of them to submit the draft under the the 5378 rules. Cullen On Dec 15, 2008, at 1:27 PM, John C Klensin wrote: Hi. In an attempt to get this discussion unstuck and to provide a way forward for those of us whose reading of 5378 (or advice from counsel) have convinced us that we cannot post most documents that contain older text written by others under the new rules, I've posted a new I-D, draft-klensin-rfc5378var-00.txt. It would be very helpful if people would actually read the draft before commenting on it -- it isn't very long, and the key section that contains the new procedure (Section 4) is under 40 lines of text -- but the intent is to make sure we don't get stuck or that we get unstuck as quickly as possible. While the draft reviews the history and context of the situation, the elevator summary of the proposal is that, if an author/ contributor is working on a document that contains old text and concludes that he or she cannot reasonably comply with the provisions of 5378, then it is permitted to post the document with IPR rules that are strictly in conformance with RFC 3978. In deference to the ever-patient and underappreciated maintainers of tools, I note that this would require no changes other than disabling (or later un-enabling) the 5378-only check that I assume the Secretariat is going to turn on tomorrow. A different possibility would be to create an exception procedure in which such an author would have to request an exemption from the IESG or the Trustees (or for the IESG to conclude that the variance procedure of RFC 2026 could be used for these cases). My personal opinion is that those approaches would add to the workload of people who are already too busy and further bog us down. This draft is not intended as a long term solution. Long-term, I think we will need to revise 5378 to make explicit provision for new documents that contain older material for which having the IETF Trust obtain additional rights is not feasible. The draft discusses that situation further. But I don't believe that we should even attempt to make that sort of change quickly, especially since I am very sensitive to Simon's comment from earlier today that I would generalize as every time a new issue comes up, we respond by making things more complex and harder to understand and work with. So, in the short term, I hope this document will either provide a basis for the new BCP that Russ indicated that the Trustees need or at least can focus enough discussion that someone else can generate such a BCP draft. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: RFC5378 alternate procedure (was: Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary)
Hi. I've just reposted this draft as draft-klensin-rfc5378var-01.txt. I didn't removing the material I indicated I was going to remove because this version follows too quickly on the previous one. There are only two sets of changes, but the first seemed sufficiently important to be worth a quick update: (1) Alfred Hoenes caught several places in which I had transposed digits or otherwise fouled up RFC numbers to which I was making reference. This type of work is sufficiently confusing without that sort of stupid problem, for which I apologize -- I thought I had proofread it carefully enough but obviously did not. They have been fixed. (2) I realized that it was necessary for completeness to un-obsolete 3948 and 4748 if they were going to be referenced, or material from them picked up and copied into, documents, so I have inserted a paragraph to take care of that. Anyone who has successful read the -00 version and understood it can safely ignore this one. Anyone who has not yet read -00, or who tried to read it and was confused by the numbering errors, may find this version more helpful. Comments are, of course, welcome on either one. john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Russ Housley wrote: Marshall: My understanding (and IANAL and Jorge is welcome to correct me) is that the IETF does indeed have sufficient rights to allow re-use of IETF documents within the IETF, and that this is purely concerned with the power of granting modification rights to other parties. This is not a very common occurrence as far as I can tell, and so in some sense this is a corner case. You are correct that the rights for the IETF Standards Process are already in place, at least for every contribution made after RFC 2026 was published. However, RFC 5378 does not include a provision for a contribution that does not grant all of the required rights. Even if the IETF Trust were to never make use of any rights beyond the IETF Standards Process, these additional rights must be granted under the requirements of RFC 5378. If a person cannot obtain the necessary rights, then that person cannot make a contribution to the IETF. This was the consensus of the IPR WG and the IETF, and the IETF is now operating under the resulting process BCP. Russ Which changes the IETF from arguably a pure RD NPO to a IP Licensing House with a portfolio worth at the very least the hundreds of millions spent on producing it. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.9.16/1840 - Release Date: 12/9/2008 4:53 PM ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
At Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:49:09 +1300, Brian E Carpenter wrote: At Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:49:09 +1300, Brian E Carpenter wrote: On 2008-12-13 08:20, Russ Housley wrote: At 01:28 PM 12/12/2008, Simon Josefsson wrote: As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix some minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis. Even though I was editor of RFC 4398. The reason is that some material in that document was written by others. At least, I cannot do this, without getting permission from the other people who wrote the initial document. I wish this is mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this example with what Russ wrote. Correct. RFC 5378 imposes this burden on the contributor. All of the rights needed to make updates to the document within the IETF Standards Process are clearly already available, but the contributor is required to obtain the additional rights that are required by RFC 5378. Formally yes. But the Trust can take the sting out of this by a vigorous effort to get former contributors to sign over the necessary rights, and by providing a convenient method for this to be done. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how this helps, because we have no tracking of all the contributors to those previous documents. So, how can the contributor know that all forme contributors have executed those additional rights grants? -Ekr ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On Sat, 13 Dec 2008 08:12:17 -0800 Eric Rescorla e...@networkresonance.com wrote: At Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:49:09 +1300, Brian E Carpenter wrote: At Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:49:09 +1300, Brian E Carpenter wrote: On 2008-12-13 08:20, Russ Housley wrote: At 01:28 PM 12/12/2008, Simon Josefsson wrote: As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix some minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis. Even though I was editor of RFC 4398. The reason is that some material in that document was written by others. At least, I cannot do this, without getting permission from the other people who wrote the initial document. I wish this is mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this example with what Russ wrote. Correct. RFC 5378 imposes this burden on the contributor. All of the rights needed to make updates to the document within the IETF Standards Process are clearly already available, but the contributor is required to obtain the additional rights that are required by RFC 5378. Formally yes. But the Trust can take the sting out of this by a vigorous effort to get former contributors to sign over the necessary rights, and by providing a convenient method for this to be done. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how this helps, because we have no tracking of all the contributors to those previous documents. So, how can the contributor know that all forme contributors have executed those additional rights grants? Additionally, I think the major problem isn't with active contributors, but with people who are inactive/unreachable. Scott K ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On Dec 12, 2008, at 1:07 PM, Russ Housley wrote: This was the consensus of the IPR WG and the IETF, I doubt the IPR WG really fully thought about this or understood it. If someone who was deeply involved can provide definitive evidence of this one way or the other that would be great. I am pretty sure this was not widely understood when it was IETF LC and I very confident it was not understood by the IESG when when they approved it. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On Dec 12, 2008, at 1:07 PM, Russ Housley wrote: This was the consensus of the IPR WG and the IETF, On Dec 13, 2008, at 8:52 AM, Cullen Jennings responded: I doubt the IPR WG really fully thought about this or understood it. If someone who was deeply involved can provide definitive evidence of this one way or the other that would be great. I am pretty sure this was not widely understood when it was IETF LC and I very confident it was not understood by the IESG when when they approved it. Cullen Jennings is right. I remember that the IPR WG consistently focused on narrow issues rather than assessing the big picture. As to Sam Hartman's original question, he is free to take any RFC and modify it to describe the essential functions of a different industry standard functional specification without asking anyone's permission. He needn't seek a copyright license from IETF or from any contributor to IETF. Quite simply, copyright doesn't apply: In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. 17 USC 102(b). The notion is not right, albeit that it is reflected in the current IETF IPR policy, that a process can be in any way restricted from being improved because someone planted a copyright notice on its essential description. An description of a process, method of operation, etc., cannot be locked away and prevented from amendment and improvement because of copyright. Allowing that would subject our functional process specifications in IETF to 100-year copyright monopolies even though there aren't even 20-year patent monopolies that apply to that specification. Nobody owns those ideas or the essential descriptions of those ideas; they are public domain. So my answer to Sam's question is: I dare anyone to try and stop you or me from taking an IETF RFC and revising it as necessary to express any new idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery. And I dare anyone to try and stop IETF or any other standards organization from adopting such an improvement as a revised RFC because of a copyright notice. /Larry Lawrence Rosen Rosenlaw Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com) 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482 707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243 Skype: LawrenceRosen ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Lawrence Rosen wrote: ... The notion is not right, albeit that it is reflected in the current IETF IPR policy, that a process can be in any way restricted from being improved because someone planted a copyright notice on its essential description. An description of a process, method of operation, etc., cannot be locked away and prevented from amendment and improvement because of copyright. Allowing that would subject our functional process specifications in IETF to 100-year copyright monopolies even though there aren't even 20-year patent monopolies that apply to that specification. Nobody owns those ideas or the essential descriptions of those ideas; they are public domain. So my answer to Sam's question is: I dare anyone to try and stop you or me from taking an IETF RFC and revising it as necessary to express any new idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery. And I dare anyone to try and stop IETF or any other standards organization from adopting such an improvement as a revised RFC because of a copyright notice. ... So, in the process of doing this, can I use the original RFC text? Best regards, Julian PS: would I need sign off from all previous contributors for the IDs I posted in November, draft-ietf-httpbis-p*? How do I find out who these contributors are in case they are not listed as authors? ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Lawrence Rosen allegedly wrote, On 12/13/08 2:04 PM: The notion is not right, albeit that it is reflected in the current IETF IPR policy, that a process can be in any way restricted from being improved because someone planted a copyright notice on its essential description. An description of a process, method of operation, etc., cannot be locked away and prevented from amendment and improvement because of copyright. Allowing that would subject our functional process specifications in IETF to 100-year copyright monopolies even though there aren't even 20-year patent monopolies that apply to that specification. Nobody owns those ideas or the essential descriptions of those ideas; they are public domain. You can improve any technology you want, modulo IPR -- that's not the point here. The problem is taking existing copyrighted text and using it as a base for describing your technology. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
You can improve any technology you want, modulo IPR -- that's not the point here. The problem is taking existing copyrighted text and using it as a base for describing your technology. That's indeed the problem we stumbled upon years ago. Suppose that a contributor has written a complete description of technology X, getting it published as a 100 pages RFC. A remarkable feat, and a great contribution to the community. A few years letter, the working group realizes that they like the technology, but would like to change a couple options. That normally translates into changing a paragraph or two, resulting in a new RFC, more than 90% identical to the previous one. Suppose now that for whatever reasons, the original author disagrees with the changes, or with the new management of the working group, or with the new editor. People are human, these things do happen. IANAL, but my understanding at the time was that the original copyright still applied to the original text, and that the working group would be left with only bad options. They could issue a delta RFC that only contained the modifications, but that is somewhat confusing for the readers. Or they could undertake a complete rewriting of the standard, but that takes a long time and is also prone to errors and confusion. This is very much why we got the statement on copyrights in RFC 1602, in 1996. You will notice that copyrights were only mentioned as something we might need to worry about later in the appendix of the previous rules, RFC 1310 published in 1992. -- Christian Huitema ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
So my answer to Sam's question is: I dare anyone to try and stop you or me from taking an IETF RFC and revising it as necessary to express any new idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery. And I dare anyone to try and stop IETF or any other standards organization from adopting such an improvement as a revised RFC because of a copyright notice. You are probably right that the combination of the broad formal and informal license that people have given for RFCs and the thin copyright protection on descriptive technical documents would mean that even if a disgruntled author of an old RFC sued to prevent his words from being adapted in a new RFC, he'd eventually lose. But I sure don't want to pay for the lawsuit to find out. The only way I can currently see out of this mess is for the IETF or the IETF Trust to take it upon itself to get new licenses from as many old authors or their heirs as it can. Regards, John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor More Wiener schnitzel, please, said Tom, revealingly. ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On 2008-12-14 05:12, Scott Kitterman wrote: On Sat, 13 Dec 2008 08:12:17 -0800 Eric Rescorla e...@networkresonance.com wrote: At Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:49:09 +1300, Brian E Carpenter wrote: On 2008-12-13 08:20, Russ Housley wrote: ... Process are clearly already available, but the contributor is required to obtain the additional rights that are required by RFC 5378. Formally yes. But the Trust can take the sting out of this by a vigorous effort to get former contributors to sign over the necessary rights, and by providing a convenient method for this to be done. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how this helps, because we have no tracking of all the contributors to those previous documents. So, how can the contributor know that all forme contributors have executed those additional rights grants? I would expect the original authors' agreement to be sufficient to cover this, with any residual text fragments from unnamed contributors being considered fair use. IANAL. Additionally, I think the major problem isn't with active contributors, but with people who are inactive/unreachable. Sure. I won't let this ruin my day, but I do expect the Trust to add some appropriate waiver text to the outgoing license, so that I can submit recycled text under RFC5378 with a clear conscience. On 2008-12-14 09:05, Scott Brim wrote: You can improve any technology you want, modulo IPR -- that's not the point here. The problem is taking existing copyrighted text and using it as a base for describing your technology. But remember, it's only a problem for doing so *outside* the IETF process (which is why it's the Trust's outgoing license that has to deal with this). Brian ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Modifying an author's original work without specified permission; regardless of new findings, constitutes a copyright infringement. On 12/13/08, Christian Huitema huit...@windows.microsoft.com wrote: You can improve any technology you want, modulo IPR -- that's not the point here. The problem is taking existing copyrighted text and using it as a base for describing your technology. That's indeed the problem we stumbled upon years ago. Suppose that a contributor has written a complete description of technology X, getting it published as a 100 pages RFC. A remarkable feat, and a great contribution to the community. A few years letter, the working group realizes that they like the technology, but would like to change a couple options. That normally translates into changing a paragraph or two, resulting in a new RFC, more than 90% identical to the previous one. Suppose now that for whatever reasons, the original author disagrees with the changes, or with the new management of the working group, or with the new editor. People are human, these things do happen. IANAL, but my understanding at the time was that the original copyright still applied to the original text, and that the working group would be left with only bad options. They could issue a delta RFC that only contained the modifications, but that is somewhat confusing for the readers. Or they could undertake a complete rewriting of the standard, but that takes a long time and is also prone to errors and confusion. This is very much why we got the statement on copyrights in RFC 1602, in 1996. You will notice that copyrights were only mentioned as something we might need to worry about later in the appendix of the previous rules, RFC 1310 published in 1992. -- Christian Huitema ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf -- AJ Jaghori Chief Network Architect | Author | Professor ciscowo...@gmail.com M: 703.362.5002 ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
IETF Chair ch...@ietf.org writes: What does a contributor do in the situation when then want to build on an older work that was contributed prior to RFC 5378? In short, the contributor must obtain the additional rights from the original contributor. Doesn't that make it possible for copyright holders to make it difficult for the IETF to update older standards? Let's consider if company X participated as editor, or merely a major contributor, to document Y five years ago. Today competitor Z is critically dependent on this technology. Company X no longer builds products using Y technology. I could see how company X would not see any point in granting Z any rights to update the IETF standard in this situation. To update Y you will need to rewrite the entire document, to avoid copyright tainting. This seems like a serious problem with the new policy to me. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
IETF Chair ch...@ietf.org writes: SAM'S QUESTION What does a contributor do in the situation when then want to build on an older work that was contributed prior to RFC 5378? In short, the contributor must obtain the additional rights from the original contributor. To my knowledge, there has never been a requirement to document all copyright holders of material in documents approved under RFC 2026 or RFC 3978. There is wording that require all major contributors to be mentioned, but it seems possible that some part of a document is copyrightable but not be a major contribution. So, how would you actually know which old contributors to contact? Any what if the contributor is deceased? It would be very useful if the IAOC/Trust develop, together with legal aid, guiding instructions for this situation. It would answer the common questions. It seems applicable to a lot of work that will happen in the next 5 years: updating any RFC issues prior to RFC 5378. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On Dec 12, 2008, at 5:49 AM, Simon Josefsson wrote: IETF Chair ch...@ietf.org writes: SAM'S QUESTION What does a contributor do in the situation when then want to build on an older work that was contributed prior to RFC 5378? In short, the contributor must obtain the additional rights from the original contributor. To my knowledge, there has never been a requirement to document all copyright holders of material in documents approved under RFC 2026 or RFC 3978. There is wording that require all major contributors to be mentioned, but it seems possible that some part of a document is copyrightable but not be a major contribution. So, how would you actually know which old contributors to contact? One of my general principles is that engineers should not try to be lawyers, and I am dubious about any attempt to make IETF contributors obtain licenses from third parties. While this has been argued to death, here is what I propose : Contributors of IETF material should represent that one or more of 3 conditions apply to any particular contribution: 1.) There is no material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work. 2.) There is material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work by one or more of the current set of authors, and they hereby license this older material under the current conditions. 3.) There is material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work and the license status of that material may not be consistent with RFC5378. Number 3 is for the cases where the previous authors were different, or where the current authors do not own their previous work, and is in either case intended to flag the contribution as possibly one needing attention by the Trust. Note that # 2 and #3 are not mutually exclusive, and obviously the Trust Counsel would need to pass any actual wording. This would shift any work to obtain earlier licenses onto the Trust and the Trust Counsel, where in my opinion it belongs. This would also serve the useful purpose of automatically obtaining licenses from people who are just reusing their own work (if they are in a position to grant such a license). Regards Marshall Any what if the contributor is deceased? It would be very useful if the IAOC/Trust develop, together with legal aid, guiding instructions for this situation. It would answer the common questions. It seems applicable to a lot of work that will happen in the next 5 years: updating any RFC issues prior to RFC 5378. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Marshall Eubanks t...@multicasttech.com writes: While this has been argued to death I disagree. The issue was raised only few weeks ago, and this e-mail thread is (as far as I have seen) the first where the problem has bee re-stated in an e-mail to any public IETF list. Contributors of IETF material should represent that one or more of 3 conditions apply to any particular contribution: 1.) There is no material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work. 2.) There is material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work by one or more of the current set of authors, and they hereby license this older material under the current conditions. 3.) There is material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work and the license status of that material may not be consistent with RFC5378. I like this. Number 3 is for the cases where the previous authors were different, or where the current authors do not own their previous work, and is in either case intended to flag the contribution as possibly one needing attention by the Trust. For # 3 it means that the Trust cannot sub-license it without contacting the original contributors. For all IETF internal purposes, there shouldn't be any problem. Note that # 2 and #3 are not mutually exclusive, and obviously the Trust Counsel would need to pass any actual wording. I believe even # 2 may need consideration by the trust, in case the pre-RFC5378 work contain copyrightable material written by others. This would shift any work to obtain earlier licenses onto the Trust and the Trust Counsel, where in my opinion it belongs. This would also serve the useful purpose of automatically obtaining licenses from people who are just reusing their own work (if they are in a position to grant such a license). Indeed. /Simon Regards Marshall Any what if the contributor is deceased? It would be very useful if the IAOC/Trust develop, together with legal aid, guiding instructions for this situation. It would answer the common questions. It seems applicable to a lot of work that will happen in the next 5 years: updating any RFC issues prior to RFC 5378. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Let's do keep in mind that the license permission for reuse in IETF work has existed explicitly since RFC 2026 (1996) and implicitly for a long time before that. So, again for IETF work, the notion of having to either contact a lot of people to get permission or to completely rewrite is just not an issue, at least for documents that have been originated or revised since 1996. There is a gray area for code materials last published before 1996, but I suggest that they are few enough for the Trust to deal with on a special-case basis. That is, I assume, one of the reasons the IPR WG gave the Trust some flexibility. Given that, Marshall, your proposal essentially requires the Trust (and potentially Counsel) to do considerable work on behalf of hypothetical third parties who might want to make non-IETF use of some IETF materials. As someone who is getting very sensitive to the rapidly rising costs of IETF registration fees and other participation expenses, especially against the background of deteriorating economies, I see no reason why I, or any IETF participant who is not directly interested in the use of those materials for non-IETF purposes, should pay for that type of author-tracking-down and license-obtaining activity. I don't care how low that marginal cost is given volunteer time from Trustees and pro bono work from Counsel; if it adds only USD 10 to the meeting fees, it is far too much. If someone feels as need to reuse text that is not under the Trust's control, let them incur the expense. john p.s. I would not personally object to the Trust's imposing a hefty copyright licensing fee on anyone who wanted to use materials outside the IETF process, hefty enough to cover the costs of what you have proposed and leave a significant safety margin. But that would clearly be inconsistent with the intent of both the IPR WG generally and those who argued most strongly for the Trust to have these rights in particular. --On Friday, 12 December, 2008 08:51 -0500 Marshall Eubanks t...@multicasttech.com wrote: ... One of my general principles is that engineers should not try to be lawyers, and I am dubious about any attempt to make IETF contributors obtain licenses from third parties. ... This would shift any work to obtain earlier licenses onto the Trust and the Trust Counsel, where in my opinion it belongs. This would also serve the useful purpose of automatically obtaining licenses from people who are just reusing their own work (if they are in a position to grant such a license). ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Dear John; On Dec 12, 2008, at 10:10 AM, John C Klensin wrote: Let's do keep in mind that the license permission for reuse in IETF work has existed explicitly since RFC 2026 (1996) and implicitly for a long time before that. So, again for IETF work, the notion of having to either contact a lot of people to get permission or to completely rewrite is just not an issue, at least for documents that have been originated or revised since 1996. But isn't that what Russ's statement would impose ? As I read it, it puts the onus on the authors to obtain the additional rights from the original contributor. I think that in practice this requirement, if enacted, would lead to a lot of cosmetic rewriting of old text. There is a gray area for code materials last published before 1996, but I suggest that they are few enough for the Trust to deal with on a special-case basis. That is, I assume, one of the reasons the IPR WG gave the Trust some flexibility. Given that, Marshall, your proposal essentially requires the Trust (and potentially Counsel) to do considerable work on behalf of hypothetical third parties who might want to make non-IETF use of some IETF materials. Why ? I was trying to propose a means to alert the Trust to the potential of this work being required. If no one requests it, why do anything ? If they should, at least the Trust would have an idea as to whether or not they had these rights to give. As to whether the Trust should pay for this, or someone else, shouldn't that be determined on a case by case basis ? As someone who is getting very sensitive to the rapidly rising costs of IETF registration fees and other participation expenses, especially against the background of deteriorating economies, I see no reason why I, or any IETF participant who is not directly interested in the use of those materials for non-IETF purposes, should pay for that type of author-tracking-down and license-obtaining activity. I don't care how low that marginal cost is given volunteer time from Trustees and pro bono work from Counsel; if it adds only USD 10 to the meeting fees, it is far too much. If someone feels as need to reuse text that is not under the Trust's control, let them incur the expense. I agree with you in principle, but that seems orthogonal to the question of what the author's of current work should be doing. Regards Marshall john p.s. I would not personally object to the Trust's imposing a hefty copyright licensing fee on anyone who wanted to use materials outside the IETF process, hefty enough to cover the costs of what you have proposed and leave a significant safety margin. But that would clearly be inconsistent with the intent of both the IPR WG generally and those who argued most strongly for the Trust to have these rights in particular. --On Friday, 12 December, 2008 08:51 -0500 Marshall Eubanks t...@multicasttech.com wrote: ... One of my general principles is that engineers should not try to be lawyers, and I am dubious about any attempt to make IETF contributors obtain licenses from third parties. ... This would shift any work to obtain earlier licenses onto the Trust and the Trust Counsel, where in my opinion it belongs. This would also serve the useful purpose of automatically obtaining licenses from people who are just reusing their own work (if they are in a position to grant such a license). ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Let us be quite clear. The question of rights in pre-existing material is not a new question. It is inherent in any effort to increase the rights granted to the trust. While I can not assert what members of the WG or the community at last call understood, there is actually text in RFC 5377 that talks about the fact that there is a need to acquire suitable rights to older material. Given that the VAST majority of IETF work is work on existing documents, and given that authors and author's companies change frequently, if we do not insist that all work be under the new rules we will have essentially failed to increase the rights grant. As such, folks who use our material will not be able to make use of it in all the ways we intend. Hence, my personal conclusion is that for the trust to have arrived any any enforcement policy other than the one they did would have seemed to me to be a case of the trust contravening the stated intention of the IETF, as captured in the RFCs. Yours, Joel M. Halpern PS: TO be quite clear, the question of whether the enforcement date is December 12 2008, February 29, 2009, or April 1, 2009 is not a matter of meeting the IETF stated policy, but rather a question of the best way to meet that. The only reason I am not more concerned by the date is the fact that as a practical matter the bulk of I-D authors will actually have until late February to get the rights sorted out. Simon Josefsson wrote: Marshall Eubanks t...@multicasttech.com writes: While this has been argued to death I disagree. The issue was raised only few weeks ago, and this e-mail thread is (as far as I have seen) the first where the problem has bee re-stated in an e-mail to any public IETF list. Contributors of IETF material should represent that one or more of 3 conditions apply to any particular contribution: 1.) There is no material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work. 2.) There is material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work by one or more of the current set of authors, and they hereby license this older material under the current conditions. 3.) There is material in this contribution from pre-RFC5378 work and the license status of that material may not be consistent with RFC5378. I like this. Number 3 is for the cases where the previous authors were different, or where the current authors do not own their previous work, and is in either case intended to flag the contribution as possibly one needing attention by the Trust. For # 3 it means that the Trust cannot sub-license it without contacting the original contributors. For all IETF internal purposes, there shouldn't be any problem. Note that # 2 and #3 are not mutually exclusive, and obviously the Trust Counsel would need to pass any actual wording. I believe even # 2 may need consideration by the trust, in case the pre-RFC5378 work contain copyrightable material written by others. This would shift any work to obtain earlier licenses onto the Trust and the Trust Counsel, where in my opinion it belongs. This would also serve the useful purpose of automatically obtaining licenses from people who are just reusing their own work (if they are in a position to grant such a license). Indeed. /Simon Regards Marshall Any what if the contributor is deceased? It would be very useful if the IAOC/Trust develop, together with legal aid, guiding instructions for this situation. It would answer the common questions. It seems applicable to a lot of work that will happen in the next 5 years: updating any RFC issues prior to RFC 5378. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com writes: Let's do keep in mind that the license permission for reuse in IETF work has existed explicitly since RFC 2026 (1996) and implicitly for a long time before that. So, again for IETF work, the notion of having to either contact a lot of people to get permission or to completely rewrite is just not an issue, at least for documents that have been originated or revised since 1996. That conflicts sharply with how I read Russ' answer the contributor must obtain the additional rights from the original contributor. I wish you were right. I was surprised by the conclusion in the initial e-mail in this thread. I had believed all along that the IETF had sufficient rights to allow re-use of IETF documents within the IETF standard. I hope further explanation of the legal situation will give us more information. There is a gray area for code materials last published before 1996, but I suggest that they are few enough for the Trust to deal with on a special-case basis. That is, I assume, one of the reasons the IPR WG gave the Trust some flexibility. I don't see how this has anything to do with code vs text separation. The issue applies equally to code and text written before pre-RFC5378. There is nothing in Russ' note to suggest that this is related to only code, nor was this an aspect brought up by Sam. I listened to the recorded plenary a few days ago to remember the details. Given that, Marshall, your proposal essentially requires the Trust (and potentially Counsel) to do considerable work on behalf of hypothetical third parties who might want to make non-IETF use of some IETF materials. No. As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix some minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis. Even though I was editor of RFC 4398. The reason is that some material in that document was written by others. At least, I cannot do this, without getting permission from the other people who wrote the initial document. I wish this is mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this example with what Russ wrote. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On Dec 12, 2008, at 1:28 PM, Simon Josefsson wrote: John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com writes: Let's do keep in mind that the license permission for reuse in IETF work has existed explicitly since RFC 2026 (1996) and implicitly for a long time before that. So, again for IETF work, the notion of having to either contact a lot of people to get permission or to completely rewrite is just not an issue, at least for documents that have been originated or revised since 1996. That conflicts sharply with how I read Russ' answer the contributor must obtain the additional rights from the original contributor. I wish you were right. I was surprised by the conclusion in the initial e-mail in this thread. I had believed all along that the IETF had sufficient rights to allow re-use of IETF documents within the IETF standard. I hope further explanation of the legal situation will give us more information. My understanding (and IANAL and Jorge is welcome to correct me) is that the IETF does indeed have sufficient rights to allow re-use of IETF documents within the IETF, and that this is purely concerned with the power of granting modification rights to other parties. This is not a very common occurrence as far as I can tell, and so in some sense this is a corner case. Regards Marshall There is a gray area for code materials last published before 1996, but I suggest that they are few enough for the Trust to deal with on a special-case basis. That is, I assume, one of the reasons the IPR WG gave the Trust some flexibility. I don't see how this has anything to do with code vs text separation. The issue applies equally to code and text written before pre-RFC5378. There is nothing in Russ' note to suggest that this is related to only code, nor was this an aspect brought up by Sam. I listened to the recorded plenary a few days ago to remember the details. Given that, Marshall, your proposal essentially requires the Trust (and potentially Counsel) to do considerable work on behalf of hypothetical third parties who might want to make non-IETF use of some IETF materials. No. As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix some minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis. Even though I was editor of RFC 4398. The reason is that some material in that document was written by others. At least, I cannot do this, without getting permission from the other people who wrote the initial document. I wish this is mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this example with what Russ wrote. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 3:40 PM, John C Klensin john-i...@jck.com wrote: ... the Trustees now believe that it is reasonable to [re] impose a deadline that gives the community two working days (it is already well into December 12 in much of the world) to modify and update tools to incorporate the new boilerplate. They gave one working day of notice that they expected the tools to be updated to begin accepting the new boilerplate last month, so this notification is at least twice as reasonable. Bill ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
At 01:28 PM 12/12/2008, Simon Josefsson wrote: As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix some minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis. Even though I was editor of RFC 4398. The reason is that some material in that document was written by others. At least, I cannot do this, without getting permission from the other people who wrote the initial document. I wish this is mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this example with what Russ wrote. Correct. RFC 5378 imposes this burden on the contributor. All of the rights needed to make updates to the document within the IETF Standards Process are clearly already available, but the contributor is required to obtain the additional rights that are required by RFC 5378. Russ ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Russ Housley hous...@vigilsec.com writes: At 01:28 PM 12/12/2008, Simon Josefsson wrote: As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix some minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis. Even though I was editor of RFC 4398. The reason is that some material in that document was written by others. At least, I cannot do this, without getting permission from the other people who wrote the initial document. I wish this is mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this example with what Russ wrote. Correct. RFC 5378 imposes this burden on the contributor. All of the rights needed to make updates to the document within the IETF Standards Process are clearly already available, but the contributor is required to obtain the additional rights that are required by RFC 5378. Interesting. Thanks for confirming the interpretation. /Simon ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Time for a sign-up campaign [Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary]
I hereby extend the rights in my contributions that I have personally granted in the past to the IETF and to the IETF Trust to include the additional rights required by RFC5378. Obviously by doing so, I cannot extend the rights granted by my various employers. I'm going to print the updated license from http://trustee.ietf.org/authorlic.html and sign it and send it in. (My name is there because I signed the older version.) I'm disappointed at how few people have signed up. Even people who've been active in this debate haven't signed up to the old version. We should surely all be signing up to the new version, if we've ever made any kind of contribution in the past. We should all be pressing our employers to sign up. The problem that Sam raised will become a minor concern if the vast majority of us sign up. Brian Carpenter ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On 2008-12-12 12:40, John C Klensin wrote: ... So, given that, the Trustees now believe that it is reasonable to [re] impose a deadline that gives the community two working days (it is already well into December 12 in much of the world) to modify and update tools to incorporate the new boilerplate. On a purely practical note, http://xml.resource.org/experimental.html works just fine (thanks to Bill Fenner). Brian ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
... the Trustees now believe that it is reasonable to [re] impose a deadline that gives the community two working days (it is already well into December 12 in much of the world) to modify and update tools to incorporate the new boilerplate. They gave one working day of notice that they expected the tools to be updated to begin accepting the new boilerplate last month, so this notification is at least twice as reasonable. I do not understand these comments. The Trustees are simply implementing the policy in RFC 5378 and the guidance given to them in RFC 5377. The only change to the boilerplate is the one that was already announced. The old boilerplate will no longer be accepted as of 16 December 2008, which is the same schedule that was announced earlier. Russ ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Marshall: My understanding (and IANAL and Jorge is welcome to correct me) is that the IETF does indeed have sufficient rights to allow re-use of IETF documents within the IETF, and that this is purely concerned with the power of granting modification rights to other parties. This is not a very common occurrence as far as I can tell, and so in some sense this is a corner case. You are correct that the rights for the IETF Standards Process are already in place, at least for every contribution made after RFC 2026 was published. However, RFC 5378 does not include a provision for a contribution that does not grant all of the required rights. Even if the IETF Trust were to never make use of any rights beyond the IETF Standards Process, these additional rights must be granted under the requirements of RFC 5378. If a person cannot obtain the necessary rights, then that person cannot make a contribution to the IETF. This was the consensus of the IPR WG and the IETF, and the IETF is now operating under the resulting process BCP. Russ ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Time for a sign-up campaign [Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary]
At 8:56 AM +1300 12/13/08, Brian E Carpenter wrote: I'm disappointed at how few people have signed up. +1. The Trust even had cookies in the room when I signed my old form. New form is on the way to them. --Paul Hoffman, Director --VPN Consortium ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
On 2008-12-13 08:20, Russ Housley wrote: At 01:28 PM 12/12/2008, Simon Josefsson wrote: As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix some minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis. Even though I was editor of RFC 4398. The reason is that some material in that document was written by others. At least, I cannot do this, without getting permission from the other people who wrote the initial document. I wish this is mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this example with what Russ wrote. Correct. RFC 5378 imposes this burden on the contributor. All of the rights needed to make updates to the document within the IETF Standards Process are clearly already available, but the contributor is required to obtain the additional rights that are required by RFC 5378. Formally yes. But the Trust can take the sting out of this by a vigorous effort to get former contributors to sign over the necessary rights, and by providing a convenient method for this to be done. Brian ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Time for a sign-up campaign [Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary]
I'm disappointed at how few people have signed up. Even people who've been active in this debate haven't signed up to the old version. I signed the old form (on paper) and handed it in a while back but do not see my name on the list -- did a bit get dropped somewhere? Scott ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
A form is being developed to assist in this task. There is no requirement that the form be used, but it will be available shortly for anyone that chooses to make use of it. This form is now available. The Contributor non-exclusive license form has been updated to grant all of the rights required by RFC 5378. Anyone wishing to use the form can find it here: http://trustee.ietf.org/authorlic.html Your General Area Director, Russ ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
Brian E Carpenter brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com writes: On 2008-12-13 08:20, Russ Housley wrote: At 01:28 PM 12/12/2008, Simon Josefsson wrote: As far as I understand, I can no longer take RFC 4398, fix some minor problem, and re-submit it as a RFC 4398bis. Even though I was editor of RFC 4398. The reason is that some material in that document was written by others. At least, I cannot do this, without getting permission from the other people who wrote the initial document. I wish this is mistaken and that someone can explain how to reconcile this example with what Russ wrote. Correct. RFC 5378 imposes this burden on the contributor. All of the rights needed to make updates to the document within the IETF Standards Process are clearly already available, but the contributor is required to obtain the additional rights that are required by RFC 5378. Formally yes. But the Trust can take the sting out of this by a vigorous effort to get former contributors to sign over the necessary rights, and by providing a convenient method for this to be done. Really? As far as I read the form in [1], it will give the IETF Trust the rights to your document. It does not give IETF participants any rights. And it is the IETF participants that will need to be able to grant the Trust these rights in order to submit a document, according to RFC 5378. What appears to be missing is a grant from the IETF Trust to IETF Participants for the documents signed over to them using the form. The legal provisions in [2] does not appear to provide this grant-back. It only grants rights to IETF participants to documents that are submitted after the effective date: The licenses granted by the IETF Trust pursuant to these Legal Provisions apply only with respect to (i) IETF Contributions (including Internet-Drafts) that are submitted to the IETF following the Effective Date, and (ii) IETF RFCs and other IETF Documents that are published after the Effective Date. Further: d. In most cases, rights to Pre-Existing IETF Documents that are not expressly granted under these RFCs can only be obtained by requesting such rights directly from the document authors. The IETF Trust and the Internet Society do not become involved in making such requests to document authors. /Simon [1] http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Contributor_Non-Exclusive_License_RFC5378.pdf [2] http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/IETF-Trust-License-Policy.pdf ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
A form is being developed to assist in this task. There is no requirement that the form be used, but it will be available shortly for anyone that chooses to make use of it. This form is now available. The Contributor non-exclusive license form has been updated to grant all of the rights required by RFC 5378. Anyone wishing to use the form can find it here: http://trustee.ietf.org/authorlic.html Your General Area Director, Russ ___ IETF-Announce mailing list IETF-Announce@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce
Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary
--On Thursday, 11 December, 2008 14:48 -0800 IETF Chair ch...@ietf.org wrote: During the IETF 73 Plenary, Sam Hartman asked some questions about the recent updates to the IETF IPR policy. Before responding to Sam's question, it will be important to provide ... The updated boilerplate will be required on I-D submissions beginning 16 December 2008. This boilerplate simply provides a pointer to the current IPR policy. Posting with the older boilerplate was allowed from 10 November 2008 through 15 December 2008 to facilitate document template updates. Regardless of the boilerplate that was used on a particular contribution, the BCPs determine the IPR policy that applies, not the boilerplate. I just want to be sure that I understand this. A question was asked during the Plenary that the Trustees believed was significant enough to require further investigation. During that investigation, the IAD indicated, in a fairly public way, that the boilerplate and/or the text to which it pointed might change as the result of those discussions, that people should not hastily start modifying tools, and that a final announcement would be made when the Trustees reached a final conclusion. I assume this is that announcement. Is that correct so far? So, given that, the Trustees now believe that it is reasonable to [re] impose a deadline that gives the community two working days (it is already well into December 12 in much of the world) to modify and update tools to incorporate the new boilerplate. Do the Trustees/ IAOC believe that is reasonable? Do you believe it is necessary? If members of the community who are responsible for the relevant tools and/or templates conclude that it is not realistic and consistent with other schedules and commitments to meet that schedule, is the best option available to them to appeal this action and, if so, to whom should the appeal be addressed? thanks, john ___ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
