Subject: Re: RFC Author Count and IPR

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:06:17 -0400

>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Housley <[email-masked]> writes:

    Russ> I am concerned that the current RFC Editor practice that
    Russ> limits the number of authors is in conflict with the IETF
    Russ> IPR policies.  The RFC Editor currently limits the author
    Russ> count to five people.  Recent IPR WG discussions make it
    Russ> clear to me that authors retain significant copyright.

[There is this concept in US copyright law called a joint work.  I'm
ignoring that concept for the moment basically because I don't
understand how it applies to either software or text developed using
an open process.  As far as I can tell, no one else understands it
either.  Please be aware that this may be a huge gap in my advice.]

So, here we have a conflicting definitions problem.

The author of a work retains the copyright interest.  That's true if
if I'm listed as an author or not.

If I write text and do not assign the copyright to someone, I retain
copyright interest in that text.

So the sixth person still owns the copyright interest in the text they
write even if they are not listed.

That means if you have unlisted authors who have contributed
significant chunks of text, you still need to get their clearance to
do anything interesting with that text.

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From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:35:45 -0400

>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Housley <[email-masked]> writes:

    Russ> Sam: We need a way to track the people that have copyright
    Russ> interest.  I had always assumed this was the author list.
    Russ> If we are going to continue to limit the author count to
    Russ> five people, then there needs to be a place where the people
    Russ> with copyright interest are listed in the document.  This is
    Russ> the reason that I included the techspec mail list on my
    Russ> posting.

I think that's probably authors?+contributors.

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From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 15:16:20 -0400

>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Housley <[email-masked]> writes:

    Russ> Sam: If the people with copyright interest are the
    Russ> combination of the authors plus the contributors, then we
    Russ> need to specify this in a BCP.

The people with copyright interest are whoever the court decides have
copyright interest.  I.E. only available on lazy evaluation.

I agree we may want to specify in our publishing practices that we
keep track of who we think has copyright interest.