RE: SPARC Author Addendum compatibility

["Lawrence Rosen" <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>]

John Klensin and Simon Joseffson wrote:
> Because "the IETF Trust is the sole owner of the copyright in a
> complete RFC" is a major step --both from the original principle
> and from where I believe we stand today-- I don't want to see it
> slip through without community discussion.  That does not
> indicate that I think it is a bad idea because I don't; I just
> believe that we need to identify consequences we might not like
> and deal with them.
> 
> > I have interpreted "author retains all rights" to mean that
> > the author retains the copyright of the material she
> > contributed.  The author is never given rights to other
> > material that the author did not contribute, at least not as
> > far as I can see in RFC 3978.
> 
> Clearly you are not the only one who interpreted things that
> way.  It is not the original interpretation.  And, as you can
> probably infer from the above, I don't really care what 3978
> says or appears to say: if we were convinced that it was
> adequate, this WG would have been closed long ago.

I am confused by the arguments in this thread. There is nothing inconsistent
between "the IETF Trust is the sole owner of the copyright in a complete
RFC" and "author retains all rights" to a contribution in that RFC. As
pointed out previously on this list, copyright law makes that possible by
distinguishing between the copyright in a contribution and the [different]
copyright in a collective or derivative work that uses that contribution.

The FAQ for the SPARC Author Addendum partially confirms that: "Publishers
require only your permission to publish an article, not a wholesale transfer
of copyright. Hold onto rights to make use of the work in ways that serve
your needs and that promote education and research activities." (See
http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.html.) 

IETF should do it that way, and not follow the path of publishers who demand
more than they need.

The suggestion that the author of a contribution assign her copyrights to
IETF with a license-back is unnecessary legal work. All that IETF needs is a
license that (1) allows IETF to publish the contribution and derivative
works thereof in an RFC, and (2) allows anyone to copy and implement the
resulting IETF specification, and to practice and sell resulting software or
hardware, without payment of royalties or other onerous conditions.

How is that different from or inconsistent with the traditional principles
of IETF?

/Larry

P.S. As an author, I myself will NEVER assign my copyright to a publisher.
They don't need it and I won't give it away. 

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242 * cell: 707-478-8932 * fax: 707-485-1243
Skype: LawrenceRosen
Author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and 
                Intellectual Property Law" (Prentice Hall 2004)



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