Re: Improvements to section 5.{1,2} in outbound-rights

[Frank Ellermann <nobody at xyzzy.claranet.de>]

Simon Josefsson wrote:

> How about the following?

>  5.1.  Rights Granted for Reproduction of RFCs
>    It has long been IETF policy to encourage copying and distribution
>    of RFCs in full.  This permits wide dissemination of the material,
>    without risking loss of context or meaning.  The IETF wishes to
>    continue to permit anyone to make full copies and translations of
>    RFCs, and to distribute them to anyone.
           ^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^
Diff mark by me, please correct me if I missed another diff.  It's okay,
maybe a bit verbose, but less chances to get it wrong and split hairs.


> 5.2.  Rights Granted for Quoting from IETF Contributions
>    There is rough consensus that it is useful to permit the quoting
>    without modification of excerpts from IETF Contributions and
>    distributing the quotes.  Such excerpts may be of any length and in
>    any context.  Translation of quotations is also to be permitted.
                   ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^
At some point it will be too verbose, when folks desperately look for a
"trap", and there is none.  You could also say that any "quotation of
translations" are permitted, translating pieces of text outside of their
complete context can be difficult.

> What remain is the current last sentence of 5.2:
>    All such quotations SHOULD be attributed properly to the IETF and
>    the IETF document from which they are taken.

> I wonder whether lawyers will understand the fine precision intended
> by that SHOULD?

Lawyers not understanding a 2119-SHOULD probably can't help with this
job.  The SHOULD IMO only means that there can be compelling reasons to
violate it, e.g. you can post grep- or diff-results without annotations,
you can write "be liberal" without a link RFC 1123, and you can talk
about "features with a high astonishment factor" without a link to REXX
and Mike Cowlishaw - IIRC in an IAB document Harald wrote "traditional".

>  How about:
>    All such quotations SHOULD be attributed properly to the IETF and
>    the IETF document from which they are taken.  That means that there
>    should be a strong recommendation that all such quotations be
>    attributed, but it should not be a legal requirement for being able
>    to quote a document.

Actually "cannot be".  Otherwise the lawyers could send us back an essay
about "fair use" that nobody (excl. lawyers) can decode.

Frank



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