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Re: draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-04.txt

--On Tuesday, 27 May, 2003 19:32 -0400 Scott Bradner <sob@harvard.edu> wrote:

As I understand it, Scott's preference would be that, at the
time the RFC Editor and the IESG signed off on a given
document,  the author be required to post an I-D that
contained an "option  1" or "option 2" statement, thereby
transferring the appropriate  rights.

yes - that way it would be unambiguous as to what copyrights
(as opposed to patent rights) were being given
I decline to play amateur lawyer here, but I do know what I've been through with a fairly large number of journals over the years.

IDs (even if they are removed by the IETF) are archived many
places around the net so the extent of the grant of copyright
(basically it comes down to withholding the right to make
derivative works or not - which is not just an IETF issue,
it also goes for RFC Editor-only documents - for example
republishing another SDO's standard to make it available for
free (with teh other SDO's support))   - I think this is
better than having the only record be  in private email to the
RFC Editor
The _record_ is in the RFC itself, i.e., in all that ugly boilerplate we carry around on the last page or so. Were some author to claim that the RFC Editor didn't really have authorization to publish with that boilerplate, all of those archived copies of the I-D would do absolutely no good -- the author could equally well claim that the modified submission was faked. Go very far down that path, and we will find ourselves needing notarized wet signatures on pieces of paper, and I _really_ don't want to go there... nor do I think it is likely to be necessary unless we succeed in making ourselves and each other severely paranoid.

And, no, for drafts, it does not come down to anything having to do with derived works. It has to do with whether or not there is a _right_ to post the draft document and keep it posted. Even with regard to standards track materials, you have argued that what we are doing/ requiring is less than any other SDO. But I know of no SDO which insists on, or even permits (to the extent to which they can control it) working drafts to remain in circulation once a standard is published. And it is that which you are insisting on here; the "derived works" issue, however important it may be, is really orthogonal. Again, I do believe that it is reasonable for us to require that for standards-process-related materials (partially because we don't have a concept of "membership" that lets us fall back on other arrangements). But there is no need or justification for it in individual submissions to the RFC Editor.

john