Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary

[Marshall Eubanks <tme at multicasttech.com>]

Dear John;

On Dec 12, 2008, at 10:10 AM, John C Klensin wrote:

> Let's do keep in mind that the license permission for reuse in
> IETF work has existed explicitly since RFC 2026 (1996) and
> implicitly for a long time before that.   So, again for IETF
> work, the notion of having to either contact a lot of people to
> get permission or to completely rewrite is just not an issue, at
> least for documents that have been originated or revised since
> 1996.

But isn't that what Russ's statement would impose ? As I read it, it  
puts the
onus on the authors to "obtain the additional rights from the original  
contributor."

I think that in practice this requirement, if enacted, would lead to a  
lot of cosmetic
rewriting of old text.

> There is a gray area for "code" materials last published before
> 1996, but I suggest that they are few enough for the Trust to
> deal with on a special-case basis.  That is, I assume, one of
> the reasons the IPR WG gave the Trust some flexibility.
>
> Given that, Marshall, your proposal essentially requires the
> Trust (and potentially Counsel) to do considerable work on
> behalf of hypothetical third parties who might want to make
> non-IETF use of some IETF materials.

Why ? I was trying to propose a means to alert the Trust to the  
potential of this work being required.
If no one requests it, why do anything ? If they should, at least the  
Trust would have an idea as to
whether or not they had these rights to give.

As to whether the Trust should pay for this, or someone else,  
shouldn't that be determined on a case by case basis ?


> As someone who is getting
> very sensitive to the rapidly rising costs of IETF registration
> fees and other participation expenses, especially against the
> background of deteriorating economies, I see no reason why I, or
> any IETF participant who is not directly interested in the use
> of those materials for non-IETF purposes, should pay for that
> type of author-tracking-down and license-obtaining activity.   I
> don't care how low that marginal cost is given volunteer time
> from Trustees and pro bono work from Counsel; if it adds only
> USD 10 to the meeting fees, it is far too much.   If someone
> feels as need to reuse text that is not under the Trust's
> control, let them incur the expense.

I agree with you in principle, but that seems orthogonal to the  
question of what the author's of current
work should be doing.

Regards
Marshall


>   john
>
> p.s. I would not personally object to the Trust's imposing a
> hefty copyright licensing fee on anyone who wanted to use
> materials outside the IETF process, hefty enough to cover the
> costs of what you have proposed and leave a significant safety
> margin.  But that would clearly be inconsistent with the intent
> of both the IPR WG generally and those who argued most strongly
> for the Trust to have these rights in particular.
>
>
> --On Friday, 12 December, 2008 08:51 -0500 Marshall Eubanks
> <tme at multicasttech.com> wrote:
>
> > ...
> > One of my general principles is that engineers should not try
> > to be lawyers, and I am dubious about any attempt to make IETF
> > contributors obtain licenses from third parties.
> > ...
> > This would shift any work to obtain earlier licenses onto the
> > Trust and the Trust Counsel, where in my opinion it belongs.
> > This would also serve the useful purpose of automatically
> > obtaining licenses from people who are just reusing their own
> > work (if they are in a position to grant such a license).

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