Subject: A real-world example of the IETF's screwed up induction process or "Who owns Syslog?" - and why is this important to IPR?

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 09:56:38 -0800

Hey guys -
So who owns Syslog? Does the IP Trust own it? Does the IETF have any claim
to it? Cool how? - because the IETF has been operating a Syslog WG since
Syslog became the defacto industry standard... as it was already the
industry standard by the time the IETF got to it... The point is simple -
the IETF probably doesnt own anything about SYSLOG since the ownership
rights to Syslog still rest with BSD. Let me demonstrate.

So someone (Mssr. L.) filed a Syslog RFC in 2001 and in doing so transfered
rights to their words about the protocol but not the protocol itself to the
IETF. That wasnt clear in the document at all nor in the copyright statement
either. This document clearly represented that it was the rights for the
IETF moving forward and all instances of it since then have had the same
shortcoming... so who owns the IP in the document?

My bet is that the filer of the original document  probably didnt own Syslog
as a Cisco Employee, and in ceeding all rights to the core IP in the
submission to the IETF, transfered rights they didnt own. This was acerbated
in the following years by Steve's miracle transfer language in BCP78 and 79.
What's really funny about this is that it possibly even opens a huge
infringement claim against Cisco and the IETF jointly by BSD one would
think. I am betting that if this is true, that Cisco would fund BSD forever
as a settlement on this one too, which I doubt Mr. Chambers would like too
much and might make a project on restructuring the IETF - god know he can
afford to :-).

I also noticed in RFC3164 that there is NO ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of the the BSD
copyright or the license thereof, only a statement as to how this Syslog
implementation relates to the BSD Syslog (the IP-Phrase to describe this
relationship is "was derived from") - and as such seems to me like it is in
fact controlled by the BSD copyright and not the ISOC copyright on the
document, making the filing of this docuument and its publishing possibly a
copyright infringement.

So then let me ask this Jorge - does this required use of the BCP78 and
BCP79 language as it sits today constitute a fraudulent misrepresentation
that this protocol is owned by the IETF...

Todd Glassey

----

syslog Working Group                                         R. Gerhards
Internet-Draft                                              Adiscon GmbH
Expires: July 7, 2006                                    January 3, 2006

                          The syslog Protocol
                   draft-ietf-syslog-protocol-16.txt

Status of this Memo

   By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
   applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
   have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
   aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
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   Drafts.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
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   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on July 7, 2006.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
-------------

Todd Glassey

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---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 10:06:14 -0800

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 9:56 AM
Subject: A real-world example of the IETF's screwed up induction process
or"Who owns Syslog?" - and why is this important to IPR?

> submission to the IETF, transfered rights they didnt own. This was
acerbated

yuck this spell shceker is horrible - should be 'exacerbated'

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 10:36:36 +0100

> rights to Syslog still rest with BSD. Let me demonstrate.
Todd,

you still seem to be laboring under the misunderstanding that there is 
such a thing as legal "ownership of a protoocol".

There is copyright in the text describing the protocol, and there's 
possibly patent rights to the technology that a protocol implements.

But I can't see that you have a legal basis for claiming that the 
protocol itself is "property" under the legal instruments we've been 
discussing.

                  Harald

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 09:24:12 -0800

Ahahahahahah - are you kidding? this is grokster all over and you folks are
about to go up in smoke.

The Offer
----------
Harald - this is about the ownership of the "Standard" under the IETF's
Copyright  & that in the case of Syslog this ownership is actually owned by
BSD, and if you and any of your partners want to settle this matter in a
Federal District Court since you are insisting I am wrong, I can arrange
that for the IETF... Anytime you want. THIS IS NOT A THREAT - Just an offer
to escalate this disagreement into a binding forum where the Technologist's
vote is less important than that IP Law.

---

Otherwise - I think YOU WILL NEED TO DO THE FOLLOWING...

If you want to shut me up - then you will get have to get Jorge to state for
the record as the IETF's  practicing Attorney, so that his Malpractice Bond
backs those words up,  that the concerns I have with regard to the Legal
Status of the IETF's conveyance and IP ownership models is WRONG, and in
doing so he will need to cite the case precedent and underlying law, but
since I have already pointed out the specific sections of US Law I am
concerned that you are violating, then I dont see how you have any other
choice.

Otherwise you admit I am right and we move on from there. Or again, per the
offer above, you and I will meet in Court sometime later this year to assure
my complaints about your abuse of me for pointing-out that you are
incompetent to practice law (legally speaking) and that this action
constitutes the solicitation by the IETF for a bunch of Technologist's to
Practice Law. This same "unlicensed practice of law" oddly enough is one of
the topics in the Ethics WG and the Information Security Committee of the
ABA at this very moment. Its referred to generally as UPL - Unlicensed
Practice of Law, which as Jorge will tell this group is illegal in the US
and since it also is happening over a wired transport that brings RICO into
play as well I would think - eh Jorge?

Separating Title 17 Rights from Title 35 Rights and damages done to them.
-----------------------------------------------
Speaking of law,  by my limited, non-professional, but better than the
average bear's understanding, one of the key failings of the BCP78/79
documents is that they wrongfully separate Title 35 *(the Patent Rights)
from the quesitons regarding the Title 17 *(the Copyright) issues and since
the two are inextricably tied together here as a Standards Initiative, with
the timers that publishing under Title 17 sets running under Title 35, they
(the two sets of IP rights) cannot be separated, or one ofg them considered
alone as in a vacumm, and its my feeling that any submission
model/assignment process must meet both sets of requirements. AGAIN - I as a
lay-person and Pro-Se Litigant believe that they CANNOT be separated.

Submitting anything creates Exclusive Rights to it
-----------------------------------------------
Further I am stating for the record that the conveyance of the rights to the
IETF in the form of the Submitter's Rights are being transferred to the IETF
by the submission according to BCP78/79, SOB's 'Unheavenly Twins' as I call
them.  And further, under these agreement frameworks  that the Submitter as
a joint contributor to the submittal with the IETF, retains NO RIGHTS to the
IETF's IP - i.e. to the templates, which means that this creates an
Exclusive Right for the IETF to that work which is then Exclusively
Controlled by the IETF's copyright per the Submissions Boilerplate no matter
what SOB published in his Unhevenly Twins or their Father, RFC2026.

In closing this thought about "that leveraging two sets of limited rights
creates an exclusive right when one of the parties holds no rights to the
others property", again this simply means under US Copyright Rules that the
assignment must be signed and in paper, something the IETF has never done
making all of it's legitimately claimed IP also in a state of 'flux or
confusion as to who owns it'... Nice work Harald.

Testing the theory in Court
---------------------------
See also - The Offer" above.

Harald - again - THIS IS NOT A THREAT - ITS AN OFFER TO RESOLVE THESE
QUESTIONS IN A REAL COURT - Once and for all -  So Harald - I say that this
transfer of the Submitter's limited rights creates an exclusive right for
the IETF... which it then uses by giving away the IP and that anytime you
want to test this theory in a Court of Law, I am ready willing and most able
to help you out there Sir.

Swimming in the water doesn't make the Pacific Ocean your property...
----------------------------
By the way - The analogy you are putting forth that is because you and the
Syslog Team swam in the Pacific Ocean they own it... and that is simply not
true. The fact is that BSD owns syslog and you and those parties that relied
on SOB's RFC2026 and BCP78 copyright pass-thru, which are both screwed up,
and that this reliance on broken language, didn't make the transfer
complete - it just created a covering of noise around the process so its
more difficult to see the actual property rights herein.

So let me continue - as an example,  I write a specification of a piece of
IP  that is formally disclosed and licensed under a BSD license, and then
submit it to the IETF. BTW - That is EXACTLY what happened in the Syslog
case so the Submitter then brings that IP into the IETF. So in their
real-world case, does their submission pertaining to their own rights
against that core IP or what? Since BSD singed nothing its clear they (BSD)
didn't submit Syslog so who on their behalf did and how was their approval
of this process captured?

Likewise, here is another analogy worth looking at - what now if there is a
formal specification which is produced in a code format as part of a
licensed code package with a BSD license on it. And at some time after its
publishing I copy that and convey that specification to the IETF by the
submission???

The first and most obvious question is "How is that possible if I dont hold
clear assignable exclusive title to the core IP?" - the answer is "it isnt".
Bluntly the claim that since I am the Author of the "Mirrored Work" that I
hold the rights per the submission (contained in the mirrored work) to the
protocol itself is out in left field so far its not funny.

What they in-fact owned under the BSD license apparently is their written
work and nothing more.  Although it could be worse in that the IETF must
have the IP owners release prior to publishing anything which would me a
serious issue, because again BSD never gave Cisco the rights to publish
their property or to turn that property over to the IETF under the IETF's
submission or copyright pass-through terms that I am aware of...

Or better yet - Harald - as another analogy, I write a biography of someone
and have it published, so let me ask, does that entitle me to those events
in that person's life? or the workproduct they produced? So how then does
writing a work about something someone else owns and then submitting that
work to the IETF convey the core IP that the 'work was about' to the IETF?

In Syslog's case, the creation of a Standard around that initial Syslog
filing work violated BSD's rights clearly - the question is whether they
(BSD) sue you personally and BCP's 78 and 79's author as well as the IETF
and Cisco over this.

BCP78/BCP79
----------------
As to BCP78 and 79 itself, I  think they need to be pulled immediately since
they clearly are flawed.

By the way - I never voted to ratify these as a member of the IETF which
your own lawyer in his last email to me admitted that the membership exists.

That said - it also means that anything that the IPR-WG does needs to be
vetted and approved by all the membership, otherwise they may have claims
for litigation against the IESG and this IPR WG including you personally
Harald - That by the way is not a threat but rather an observation of
Executives underlying liability and how easy it is in US Courts to pierce
the veil of the corporate shield... which BTW does the IETF have anyway?

And in moving forward Harald we are no where near done here  - there is much
more below ...

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harald Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
To: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 1:36 AM
Subject: Re: A real-world example of the IETF's screwed up induction process
or "Who owns Syslog?" - and why is this important to IPR?

> such a thing as legal "ownership of a protoocol".

There is. The rights to the core port of BSD are controlled by the BSD
License and the induction of that IP into the IETF violated that license.
Syslog is apparently just one of some number of protocol's that this IETF
'stole' from their registered owners to represent that these were IETF
Protocols controlled under the IETF copyright. They are not... the IETF's
documents are what are controlled under the IETF's Copyrights and that is
all if and only if the IP Transfers were done properly per my understanding
of the law - Jorge - again, is this worng?

>
> There is copyright in the text describing the protocol,

Yes and Patent rights as well to that technology - in fact it is very
difficult to separate the patent rights from an IP Publishing instance...
You see Patents have descriptions of the technology in real everyday
language as well as drawings and descriptions of the claims as well.

Title 17 is not enough by itself - you must include Title 35 as well to
complete the IP management picture...

> and there's

Yes but  in response to this push-back there are underlying IP rights that
are codified with regard to "the code" in BCP78 3.3.a(e) which clearly gives
the code away. The CODE by the way is defined in Title 35 pretty well, &  I
would think so you might want to look at the patent act and its code or IP
definitions.  The problem is that someone (a party of the first part)
writing about someone elses property (the party of the Second Part) doesnt
make that property the property of the writer (the Party of the First Part),
although their words may be.

> protocol itself is "property" under the legal instruments we've been

The IETF's Standards Process (aka Mr. Bradner's 'Wild Ride') requires
ownership of the Core IP - not the words written about it by the Submittor.
And as such, I dont think you can standardize something that the IETF doesnt
formally control the code models for because that is what the standard is
for - the protocol design and its workflows, which the IETF nor the Syslog
WG own in this particular matter - yet at least... those rights still rest
with BSD.

If this is true then the publishing of any documents that 'give' anything
more than the 'document' away and not the rights to its content, is an
issue. Likewise NO IETF Standard can be issued to any protocol where the
Legal Ability to Codifiy the Specific Standard cannot be wholly framed
within the IETF's Copyright Requirements.

Oooooooppps. Hmmm - my understanding of the BSD license is that no Syslog
Code models whether in Narrative (i.e. described in words) or Modeled form's
(i.e. packaged as code excerpt or MIB for example) can be given away except
under the BSD license, which must be passed through seamleesly and
undisturbed, which of course would break the IETF's process.

---

Bluntly - I think that this IETF and its IESG is in very hot water if these
statements are true - since it also stands that it (the ISOC in this case)
probably doesnt own much of what it (the IETF) has published to date,
potentially making this IETF useless and a waste of time at best, as well as
a huge liability to ISOC.

In fact, that newly realized global liability in and of itself - and the
gross failure of the IETF to control these property issues over the years
its been arguing internally about these, is the primary reason I can see for
for ISOC disbanding the IETF in my opinion. Which is an event that I guess
would put a good many of you Carreer-Standards folks out of a job right?

Unfortunately since that liability - being jobless if the IETF folds - for
you exists as well, that makes your acting as management in this IETF
another conflict of interest. You dont get to conbtribute and manage what
gets to be contributed at the same time... It's a real and simply identified
conflict, and that is the Global Standard.

Todd Glassey
<personal disclaimers apply>

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 10:00:45 -0800

Oops-
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
To: "Harald Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>; "Contreras, Jorge"
<[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: A real-world example of the IETF's screwed up induction
processor "Who owns Syslog?" - and why is this important to IPR?

> Ahahahahahah - are you kidding? this is grokster all over and you folks
are

TYPO warning in next block - text is corrected by the next insertion.

> them

is wronly noticed in all IETF Licenses as an non-exclusive transfer when in
fact it is exclusive. (Sorry this piece of this sentence didnt come
through).

> And further, under these agreement frameworks  that the Submitter as