Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
Keith Moore wrote: it's really very simple: people posted I-Ds with the assurance that they would be retired after six months. it's not reasonable for IETF to violate that assurance without permission. Errr, people post IDs to publicly accessible mailing lists which are being archived onto the Internet. *some* people do that, and I wish they wouldn't. they should just post the I-D name and the abstract. if we want to read the draft we're perfectly capable of downloading it ourselves... The question is how hard it is going to be for folks to access them in the future, and whether it is useful for the IETF as a whole to make sure that such access is simple for all. yawn. it's not as if this is a new discussion. it's one thing for the drafts to be available elsewhere, another thing for IETF to go back on its word. it's an integrity thing. (granted, integrity is in short supply these days in many places) so if IETF wants to make old drafts publically available (and I agree this could be a useful thing), it really should get permission from the authors. or at least notify them and give authors the chance to say please do not make my old documents publically accessible. If you really think this is practical, then you should contact the nices folks at Google and ask them to take down the Usenet archives they'll happily remove your postings if you ask them to do so. maybe the same thing, with adqeuate notice, would be okay for IETF and old I-Ds. the point being - sure it's useful to have thsoe drafts available, but please take reasonable steps to protect authors' interests. don't blindly assume that you have the right to ignore the original terms of use. that's just irresponsible. it would also be reasonable to allow authors to specify, when submitting a new I-D, whether the draft should be made available after expiration. Sorry, I don't see this as being reasonable *or* practical. if respecting the author's wishes isn't reasonable or practical, it might be that you live in a pretty warped world. respect for document authors' wishes, keeping one's word. what strange concepts! Keith
RE: IPR and I-D boilerplate
Peter, ...there were pretty categoric statements made during the last iteration of this thread that a Drafts archive *was* going up soon. Has this idea been shelved, canceled, delayed or absorbed by the event horizon surrounding the infinitely dense Black Hole that is the intellectual property mess? ;-) Try http://ietfreport.isoc.org/ Regards, Graham Travers International Standards Manager BTexact Technologies e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel: +44(0) 1359 235086 mobile: +44(0) 7808 502536 fax: +44(0) 1359 235087 HWB279, PO Box 200,London, N18 1ZF, UK BTexact Technologies is a trademark of British Telecommunications plc Registered office: 81 Newgate Street London EC1A 7AJ Registered in England no. 180 This electronic message contains information from British Telecommunications plc which may be privileged or confidential. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual(s) or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify us by telephone or email (to the numbers or address above) immediately.
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
Peter Deutsch wrote: g'day, John C Klensin wrote: . . . Please, folks, I am _not_ trying to restart the discussion of archival I-Ds. Personally, I remain opposed to the idea, and I believe that they should be treated as drafts and discarded. If they result in an RFC, then the RFC should stand on its own. Nor do I think that there is any quick fix to the patent situation, least of all anything like this. Well, without repeating the entire thread yet again there were pretty categoric statements made during the last iteration of this thread that a Drafts archive *was* going up soon. Has this idea been shelved, canceled, delayed or absorbed by the event horizon surrounding the infinitely dense Black Hole that is the intellectual property mess? ;-) And if we're going to state our own opinions in an aside, I personally believe that such an archive would be invaluable. He who fogets history is doomed to repeat it and all that Yes. The history here is the reason why the drafts are ephemeral and not archived - to encourage the exchange of incomplete ideas. The success of this history is what is being compromised. Archiving them creates an environment where drafts and updates will be stalled, with the response well, since this is archival, we'd better get it a little more complete. Given how long it takes for even the active drafts to make it to RFC with such discussion, the chilling effect on the creation of RFCs (at least by people who _are_ careful, who you want to encourage) may grind things to a halt. Joe
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
Thanks a 1x10^6. I missed that! - peterd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter, ...there were pretty categoric statements made during the last iteration of this thread that a Drafts archive *was* going up soon. Has this idea been shelved, canceled, delayed or absorbed by the event horizon surrounding the infinitely dense Black Hole that is the intellectual property mess? ;-) Try http://ietfreport.isoc.org/ Regards, Graham Travers International Standards Manager BTexact Technologies e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel: +44(0) 1359 235086 mobile: +44(0) 7808 502536 fax: +44(0) 1359 235087 HWB279, PO Box 200,London, N18 1ZF, UK BTexact Technologies is a trademark of British Telecommunications plc Registered office: 81 Newgate Street London EC1A 7AJ Registered in England no. 180 This electronic message contains information from British Telecommunications plc which may be privileged or confidential. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual(s) or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic message in error, please notify us by telephone or email (to the numbers or address above) immediately. -- - Peter Deutsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gydig Software That's it for now. Remember to read chapter 11 on the implications of quantum mechanic theory for time travel and be prepared to have been here last week to discuss. -
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
Joe Touch wrote: . . . Yes. The history here is the reason why the drafts are ephemeral and not archived - to encourage the exchange of incomplete ideas. The success of this history is what is being compromised. Archiving them creates an environment where drafts and updates will be stalled, with the response well, since this is archival, we'd better get it a little more complete. Given how long it takes for even the active drafts to make it to RFC with such discussion, the chilling effect on the creation of RFCs (at least by people who _are_ careful, who you want to encourage) may grind things to a halt. Well, if the community collectively decided that they didn't want to remember its history, that would be fine but I mentioned this because I thought that when we last went through this it was the consensus that remembering would be a Good Thing (to quote a well know flowing arranging allegedly insider trader.. ;-) and I saw statements that an archive was coming soon. This may have been in out-of-band communications, not the list but in any event as Graham has pointed out, ISOC is doing this now. Good stuff... FWIW, I personally don't buy the it will have a chilling effect on discussion arguement, given that the email lists are archived here, there and everywhere and now Google has all the old Usenet postings up. Have you actually gone to Google and checked out the Usenet archives? It's amazing what's out there. So why not RFC Drafts? I've already had cause a couple of times to help research a couple of prior art claims and I was amazed to find out what was still out there. It was just hard to track down. I don't think we do ourselves any favours by forcing folks into this attic cleaning mode. We might as well put it all out as a tool for research, because it's not just about patent claims. It's actually useful to trace out the development process so you can understand it, and make it work better. Sort of a first derivative of research, to do research about research I guess... - peterd -- - Peter Deutsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gydig Software That's it for now. Remember to read chapter 11 on the implications of quantum mechanic theory for time travel and be prepared to have been here last week to discuss. -
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
it's really very simple: people posted I-Ds with the assurance that they would be retired after six months. it's not reasonable for IETF to violate that assurance without permission. so if IETF wants to make old drafts publically available (and I agree this could be a useful thing), it really should get permission from the authors. or at least notify them and give authors the chance to say please do not make my old documents publically accessible. it would also be reasonable to allow authors to specify, when submitting a new I-D, whether the draft should be made available after expiration. Keith
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
Keith Moore wrote: it's really very simple: people posted I-Ds with the assurance that they would be retired after six months. it's not reasonable for IETF to violate that assurance without permission. Errr, people post IDs to publicly accessible mailing lists which are being archived onto the Internet. One consequence of this is that copies of those drafts (and everything else posted to the mailing list) will never leave the net. The question is how hard it is going to be for folks to access them in the future, and whether it is useful for the IETF as a whole to make sure that such access is simple for all. What I think folks may reasonably assume is that any draft they post will go out of scope after six months and not be in consideration for working group study but it's unrealistic, and has been since about 1988, to think that they you can arrange for them to disappear from the face of the Internet and not be accessible after that period. so if IETF wants to make old drafts publically available (and I agree this could be a useful thing), it really should get permission from the authors. or at least notify them and give authors the chance to say please do not make my old documents publically accessible. If you really think this is practical, then you should contact the nices folks at Google and ask them to take down the Usenet archives, and perhaps look around at the various unofficial mailing archives that so many folks run today. First time I went to the Google archive I found postings I'd made in 1987 are still floating around. It never occured to me that I could ask Google to stop sharing my misspent youth with the world... it would also be reasonable to allow authors to specify, when submitting a new I-D, whether the draft should be made available after expiration. Sorry, I don't see this as being reasonable *or* practical. If you work in private groups to develop private standards this might be reasonable, but the IETF works very hard to make their work publically accessible and one consequence of that is that folks have to accept that entering the process means everything you do is going to be out there. Even if the IETF didn't run such an archive of mailing lists, etc other folks do, and have done so for a long time. All we're talking about here is simplifying things... - peterd -- - Peter Deutsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gydig Software That's it for now. Remember to read chapter 11 on the implications of quantum mechanic theory for time travel and be prepared to have been here last week to discuss. -
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
Keith Moore wrote: if respecting the author's wishes isn't reasonable or practical, it might be that you live in a pretty warped world. Or a courtroom (or will). These aren't just wishes; there are valid copyright issues. Joe
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
These aren't just wishes; there are valid copyright issues. perhaps. but even if the lawyers said it was okay for IETF to make those archives public, I'd still argue that it's acting in bad faith for IETF to do so without a reasonable effort to get permission. i.e. laws and ethics aren't the same thing.
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, Keith Moore wrote: These aren't just wishes; there are valid copyright issues. perhaps. but even if the lawyers said it was okay for IETF to make those archives public, I'd still argue that it's acting in bad faith for IETF to do so without a reasonable effort to get permission. I fail to see how this would be a problem. At time X, there is an announcement (on mailing list, internet-drafts autoresponder, whatnot) that archives will be made available. At time X+6 months expired drafts are purged, and all drafts are also archived. It can then be assumed that the author will be aware of the policy wrt. his drafts. -- Pekka Savola Tell me of difficulties surmounted, Netcore Oy not those you stumble over and fall Systems. Networks. Security. -- Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
--On Monday, 01 July, 2002 13:55 -0700 Peter Deutsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: so if IETF wants to make old drafts publically available (and I agree this could be a useful thing), it really should get permission from the authors. or at least notify them and give authors the chance to say please do not make my old documents publically accessible. If you really think this is practical, then you should contact the nices folks at Google and ask them to take down the Usenet archives, and perhaps look around at the various unofficial mailing archives that so many folks run today. First time I went to the Google archive I found postings I'd made in 1987 are still floating around. It never occured to me that I could ask Google to stop sharing my misspent youth with the world... It may be desirable that it not occur to you, but you probably could do just that. As I understand the copyright rules, and the notice-and-takedown provisions, at least in the US, you could presumably notify Google that they had duplicated and posted your copyrighted material without your permission, that you did not grant such permission, and that you insisted that they take specific materials down. And they would have little choice other than to do so. Sorry, I don't see this as being reasonable *or* practical. If you work in private groups to develop private standards this might be reasonable, but the IETF works very hard to make their work publically accessible and one consequence of that is that folks have to accept that entering the process means everything you do is going to be out there. Even if the IETF didn't run such an archive of mailing lists, etc other folks do, and have done so for a long time. All we're talking about here is simplifying things... Peter, the instructions for I-D authors (see http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt) are, and have always been, quite clear that it is possible to post an I-D with the option 3 clause, e.g., This document is an Internet-Draft and is NOT offered in accordance with Section 10 of RFC2026, and the author does not provide the IETF with any rights other than to publish as an Internet-Draft. That provision involves no transfer of copyright and no authorization to do anything beyond the expiration date. That seems pretty specific. If you think it unreasonable, I'd take it up with the IPR effort/BOF. john
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
Joe, --On Saturday, June 29, 2002 6:32 PM -0700 Joe Touch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've recently had another close encounter with the patent system and notions of prior art. It occurs to me that we could make a slight modification to the Internet Draft structure and encourage including an additional bit of information that would be quite helpful in some cases: ... So I think we should encourage Internet-Draft editors and authors to list a revision history when they consider it important. .. And, where it seems appropriate to the authors or the community, it seems to me that we might reasonably ask the RFC Editor to carry these data forward into the archival form of the document (if an RFC is actually produced). John, Those dates wouldn't be useful per se. Just because an RFC asserts the ideas herein originated at the following earlier date, that probably isn't enough to establish the earlier date for patent purposes (pro or con). Of course not. A revision history might be useful for other reasons, esp. as the ID progresses. But the ID is really the draft of an RFC (or a throw-away if there isn't an RFC). Information on the preliminary versions of a document, who added what when, etc. may be interesting at the time, but the contents of an RFC should strive to transcend that level of content. I agree. Please, folks, I am _not_ trying to restart the discussion of archival I-Ds. Personally, I remain opposed to the idea, and I believe that they should be treated as drafts and discarded. If they result in an RFC, then the RFC should stand on its own. Nor do I think that there is any quick fix to the patent situation, least of all anything like this. However, if someone is searching for prior art in good faith, a backward pointer that indicates that something _might_ exist, that there is a path worth investigating, seems worthwhile. Similarly, if one is trying to invalidate a patent or push back on an application, hints about where to look for things that the patent-applicant should have known about at the time might be helpful. It is clearly cheap to provide the back pointers, at least unless we try to turn it into something that proves anything or establishes dates for patent purposes. The key is what one does given the back pointer. Me, I'd try get in touch with the author, offer to pay a consulting fee if needed and appropriate, and see whether there is an applicable history and how to document it. Could that lead to a request to the Secretariat or some other archive for an expired I-D? Sure, but the Secretariat handles those requests now. I am _just_ proposing a back pointer that tells interested partie that there might be something worth looking for. No more. Anything else takes us into ratholes with, IMO, little benefit for the reasons you and others have pointed out. john
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
g'day, John C Klensin wrote: . . . Please, folks, I am _not_ trying to restart the discussion of archival I-Ds. Personally, I remain opposed to the idea, and I believe that they should be treated as drafts and discarded. If they result in an RFC, then the RFC should stand on its own. Nor do I think that there is any quick fix to the patent situation, least of all anything like this. Well, without repeating the entire thread yet again there were pretty categoric statements made during the last iteration of this thread that a Drafts archive *was* going up soon. Has this idea been shelved, canceled, delayed or absorbed by the event horizon surrounding the infinitely dense Black Hole that is the intellectual property mess? ;-) And if we're going to state our own opinions in an aside, I personally believe that such an archive would be invaluable. He who fogets history is doomed to repeat it and all that - peterd -- - Peter Deutsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gydig Software That's it for now. Remember to read chapter 11 on the implications of quantum mechanic theory for time travel and be prepared to have been here last week to discuss. -
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
John C Klensin wrote: Hi. I've recently had another close encounter with the patent system and notions of prior art. It occurs to me that we could make a slight modification to the Internet Draft structure and encourage including an additional bit of information that would be quite helpful in some cases: ... So I think we should encourage Internet-Draft editors and authors to list a revision history when they consider it important. .. And, where it seems appropriate to the authors or the community, it seems to me that we might reasonably ask the RFC Editor to carry these data forward into the archival form of the document (if an RFC is actually produced). John, Those dates wouldn't be useful per se. Just because an RFC asserts the ideas herein originated at the following earlier date, that probably isn't enough to establish the earlier date for patent purposes (pro or con). A revision history might be useful for other reasons, esp. as the ID progresses. But the ID is really the draft of an RFC (or a throw-away if there isn't an RFC). Information on the preliminary versions of a document, who added what when, etc. may be interesting at the time, but the contents of an RFC should strive to transcend that level of content. Joe
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
Lloyd Wood wrote: Given that a large number of drafts, including even draft-bradner-submission-rights-00.txt currently end in a boilerplate saying copyright (year) or an out-of-date year because the boilerplate has been cut and pasted from a previous draft, it would be impossible to rely on the information that you propose. Draft authors aren't generally awfully hot on proofing such details. The IETF has mailing list records, where draft submissions are announced and ideas are recorded. Isn't that sufficient? FWIW, the contents of the draft aren't typically mailed; only the abstract and title. Drafts are that - drafts, and are intended to disappear. If there is information in them that needs archiving, it either gets issued as an RFC (which is archived at the date of issue of the RFC), or can easily be documented by other mechansims, e.g., in published papers, personal laboratory notebooks, or technical reports. IDs are not tech reports. Joe
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
On Thu, 27 Jun 2002 08:30:21 EDT, John C Klensin said: 2000.04.01 or first submitted 1999.12.25. Or the author could choose to list each version number, the date, and perhaps a brief summary of major ideas introduced. You'd have to do this, in case the prior art was something introduced between -03 and -04 due to working group discussion -- Valdis Kletnieks Computer Systems Senior Engineer Virginia Tech msg08668/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: IPR and I-D boilerplate
--On Thursday, 27 June, 2002 11:12 -0400 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 27 Jun 2002 08:30:21 EDT, John C Klensin said: 2000.04.01 or first submitted 1999.12.25. Or the author could choose to list each version number, the date, and perhaps a brief summary of major ideas introduced. You'd have to do this, in case the prior art was something introduced between -03 and -04 due to working group discussion Again, I am less interested in a firm rule (or discussions or such rules) in this case as much as I am about giving someone a strong indication that there might have been something published of interest, something that they had best track down before swearing that they have good reason to believe that no prior art exists. Whether, at that point, they try to obtain the old I-D (and I don't think this provides any justification for re-visiting our policies on availability of those documents), or contact the author, or believe that everything in the last version was in the first one or was obvious from it, or pretend ignorance, is really a separate matter. john
