RE: Question for Jorge: "Distribution of this memo is unlimited."

["Contreras, Jorge" <Jorge.Contreras at wilmerhale.com>]

>Jorge,
>
>All RFCs since the creation of the IETF, and some earlier ones,
>include in their preamble "Distribution of this memo is unlimited."

>Does this have any particular legal significance?

>      Brian

Brian,

Under US copyright law (and that of most other countries),
the right to "distribute" copies of a work is one of the exclusive
rights granted to the copyright owner (as are the rights to
reproduce and to create derivative works).

The statement could be understood to mean that the
"memo" may be distributed by anyone.  This would not mean, of 
course, that the document could be modified or that derivative
works could be created (or, arguably, that extracts could be
made).

Oddly, this statement is not required by (or mentioned in)
the IETF IPR policy embodied in BCP 78, and it is seemingly
inconsistent with the licenses granted by individual contributors,
at least under Section 3.3(a)(A) of BCP 78 (which may not be 
a bad thing, since it seems to be generally agreed that this
license grant is too narrow and is currently in the process of 
being fixed in Scott Brander's I-D).  

Another issue with this statement is that it is not clear who is making 
it (i.e., who is granting permission to distribute?).
If the statement is made only by the "author(s)", then it's not 
clear that permission was obtained from the other "contributor(s)"
to the work.  If the statement was being made by IETF, 
it is not clear that the contributors ever gave IETF the right
to make such a grant.  For this reason (and probably some others)
all of the license grants from the Contributors were collected
in Section 3.3(a) of BCP 78, and the amount of boilerplate/legends
in each individual document was reduced.  However, this
particular piece of boilerplate seems to have survived the winnowing
process and continues to appear in documents even though it's not 
mentioned in Sec. 5 of BPC 78.

I would suggest that in the next draft of Scott's amendment
to BCP 78, this statement either be
eliminated or mentioned in the "required legends"
section (so that there is some linkage between the actual
license grants and the statement).

--Jorge

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