RE: #1511: Proposed resolution of Incoming 5.10: Back-license to document authors in resulting RFCs

[John C Klensin <john-ietf at jck.com>]

--On Monday, 12 November, 2007 10:42 -0800 "John Calhoon (LCA)"
<John.Calhoon at microsoft.com> wrote:

> Thanks Brian,
> 
> Usual IANAL disclaimer
> 
> My internal counsel believes the statement I offered covers
> the contributors rights in the collective work in alignment
> with current (U.S.) copyright practice.

John,

I don't have any reason to doubt your internal counsel's
opinion, but you are ( both?) missing the point.   The point is
that, if we go through the following sequence:

	(1) some text is contributed by the original author, 
	
	(ii) it is edited by the RFC Editor in some sort of
	greater or lesser degree of collaboration with the
	author,
	
	(iii) the author gives final approval to publication of
	the edited document.  Note that, while there are some
	procedures if the author refused to cooperate, our
	normal procedure is that the final approval decision to
	publish a document rests with the author, not the IESG
	or RFC Editor.

Now, under current US Copyright practice, the author clearly
retains rights to the contribution in (i).  The long-standing
IETF position, and the one that Brian and I (and others) are
trying to preserve, is that the authors retains rights to the
edited version of the original contribution as it emerges from
(iii)... and retains those rights on the same basis as if the
contributed version and edited version are identical (as they
will be, sometimes).

     john



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