Subject: RE: ISSUE? What does the copyright claim in I-D/RFCs mean?

From: "Contreras, Jorge" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 22:47:11 -0500

Quite a few people have made good and interesting observations
on this topic, so I'll respond simply be listing some general
observations and conclusions below, without trying to hit each
question/issue in each of the postings:

1.  Copyright notice is a peculiarity of US copyright law.  It is
not required in any other jurisdiction of which I am aware.

2.  Even in the US, the notice is not required to secure copyright
protection.  Copyright exists as soon as a work of authorship is
created.  This happens by operation of law.  The author does not
need to do anything for the copyright to exist.

3.  This being said, a copyright notice is useful for a few reasons.
Primarily, it notifies the world that the author owns the copyright.
If a copyright notice is present on a work, an infringer can't 
claim not to have known the work was copyrighted.  This has an effect
on the type of damages that can be collected for infringement.  I am
oversimplifying, but this is the gist of it.

4.  The copyright notice is supposed to list the date of first 
publication.  

5.  If the year listed in the notice is before the date of first
publication (e.g., if I submit an I-D on December 30, 2005, with a 
2005 copyright notice and the I-D is not published until January 2, 2006)
there could be some effect on the term of copyright protection, but
this is trivial given the current 95-year copyright term in
the US.

6.  Thus, I think it would be desirable to specify that the year
should be year of publication, but getting it slightly wrong should
not prohibit publication.  

7.  The IESG should have some ability, probably,
to deal with smart alecks who, reading this advice, decide to 
list the year of their submissions as 250 BC, or "the Year 2525", or
something else that's not reasonable.

8.  There is a more important question about the appropriate
"owner" to be identified in the notice.  Under US law, copyright
notice for derivative or collective works should reflect the
owner of the derivative or collective work, rather than the owners
of the underlying or constituent works.  Thus, if the IETF Trust
owned the copyright in the "collective" work embodied in an RFC,
it would be proper for the copyright notice to identify the Trust
as the copyright owner.

9.  The question is more complex for I-Ds that are really
submissions of individuals, rather than collective or derivative
works.  John Klensin asked, quite appropriately, why an ISOC/IETF
copyright notice should apply to an I-D that is simply a work
written and submitted by Joe Engineer.  While the IETF may own the copyright
in the boilerplate surrounding Joe's text, the text itself, in
unmodified form, remains Joe's.  Why should it bear an IETF copyright
notice?  Isn't it improper to imply that the IETF owns the copyright
in the I-D, when it really doesn't? (i.e., it only has license rights
granted by the authors, not actual ownership of the copyright). 

10.  After giving it some thought, I tend to agree with John.  The ISOC copyright
notice requirement on I-Ds probably isn't correct.  (It is also 
arguably incorrect for RFCs under the current rules, though I would
urge the adoption of clarifying language to give IETF (through the IETF
Trust) ownership of the collective work in RFCs.)  There isn't a clean
solution that I see to fix the I-D copyright notice section.  We 
wouldn't want to invite I-D authors to add their own copyright notices
to every I-D, as this would probably be difficult to administer and 
confusing.  We may decide to eliminate the copyright notice requirement
for I-Ds altogether.  After all, notice is not required in any country
other than the US, and it's not really that important in the US either
(particularly in the context of an SDO like IETF -- we're not talking
about MP3 files).  We could also require an outright transfer of copyright 
ownership to the IETF Trust.  This would definitely simplify the notice 
question (i.e., everything would by copyright IETF Trust).  However, this
type of assignment would be a material departure from current IETF practice.

 I suspect that the IPR WG should consider the pros and cons of
various approaches and perhaps add this question to the charter for the WG to consider.

Regards,
Jorge

-----Original Message-----
From: Joel M. Halpern [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 8:31 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: ISSUE? What does the copyright claim in I-D/RFCs mean?

There are several problems with the date rejection:
Most significantly, as far as I am concerned, we never publicly 
stated that the date had to be the current year.  The BCP says 
(year).  It does not actually say that the year has to be the year at 
time of submission.  Id-checklist simply tells people to comply with the BCP.

Secondly, the copyright notice ought to correspond to the time of 
writing.  If someone prepared an I-D in December 2005, and submitted 
it in February 2006, I don't see a reason why it has to say copyright 
2006.  I don't really mind if we require the current year, if it 
accomplishes something useful and we tell people that is the requirement.

And finally, since what we care about is the rights in the overall 
document granted to the IETF, I find focusing on the hypothesis that 
a copyright notice can copyright part of document and that such is 
what we want for some reason, very confusing.  What we want is the 
rights to work with the document.  The copyright notice is currently 
part of getting those rights.

Yours,
Joel

At 02:50 AM 3/6/2006, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>Joel M. Halpern wrote:
>>While I agree that the 2006 date requirement is surprising, and 
>>arguably inappropriate as a requirement, I suspect that in fact it 
>>is more accurate.  I know for example that two I-Ds I am involved 
>>with went in with 2005 dates when they had been modified in 
>>2006.  (There used to be a rule about having to put multiple years 
>>on, but that has reportedly gone by the wayside.)
>>I suspect that the vast bulk of I-Ds that went in with 2005 dates 
>>did so by accident.  That folks had modified the I-D, and simply 
>>had not modified the copyright date.
>>In fact, while the I-D checklist requires the copyright notice with 
>>a year, the text in 3978 does not say that it must be the current year.
>>So there is certainly reason to object to the more rigid enforcement.
>>Yours,
>>Joel
>>At 08:16 PM 3/5/2006, John C Klensin wrote:
>>
>>>My problem is with that 2006 date as a
>>>requirement.  It seems to me that a 2005 date is at least as
>>>appropriate and may even be more appropriate given the intent of
>>>dates on copyright statements.
>
>I don't get either of these points of view.
>
>If what the IETF Trust (or ISOC) copyright statement refers to
>is as Jorge describes it, it's the version frozen in time at the
>moment of publication that we care about, i.e. the current year.
>
>      Brian

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---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 22:31:52 -0800

So then Jorge - who owns the rights to the Standard and any protocols
produced from it. Its not the original submitters - there is two levels of
deriviative genesis in the designs of the new protpcol. So who owns the
rights to the mechanical protocol that  is produced inside the IETF??? is it
the IETF? is it granted to the people that submitted it? And how does this
relate to those that participated in the vetting - what rights to the beast
do they have?

I think you may have uncovered the ultimate lie in the the IETF's Promise...

Todd Glassey

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Contreras, Jorge" <[email-masked]>
To: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 7:47 PM
Subject: RE: ISSUE? What does the copyright claim in I-D/RFCs mean?

10.  After giving it some thought, I tend to agree with John.  The ISOC
copyright

 I suspect that the IPR WG should consider the pros and cons of
various approaches and perhaps add this question to the charter for the WG
to consider.

Regards,
Jorge

-----Original Message-----
From: Joel M. Halpern [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 8:31 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: ISSUE? What does the copyright claim in I-D/RFCs mean?

time of submission.  Id-checklist simply tells people to comply with the
BCP.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 16:21:42 +0100

Contreras, Jorge wrote:
...
> not prohibit publication.  

We're clearly not talking about the date of first publication
of the underlying content, because that will never be (C) IETF Trust.

But are we talking about first publication of a particular
collective work (version N of a draft) or about first publication
of the first version of this collective work (version 00 of a draft)?

In other words if the -00 draft is published in 2005 and the -01 draft
is published in 2006, which date is appropriate for the -01 draft?
If the RFC is then published in 2007, which date is appropriate for
the RFC?

Thanks

     Brian