Re: Stupid question: How are "the rights to represent theSponsor"as codified in BCP78 and BCP79...

[Simon Josefsson <simon at josefsson.org>]

Black_David at emc.com writes:

> Simon,
>
>> >> > The IETF works with individual contributors, full stop.
>> >> 
>> >> Good, maybe the BCP 78 legalese about some contributors 
>> >> "representing an organization" can be removed or trimmed
>> >> or clarified.
>> >
>> > Complete removal is not an option, courtesy of "work for hire":
>> > 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire
>> 
>> Right, but the text shouldn't say that organizations grant 
>> the IETF some
>> rights.  I believe section 5.1 of -incoming currently says that.
>
> I believe that "shouldn't" is incorrect ...
>
> When "work for hire" applies, the copyright rights that -incoming
> requires for the IETF have to come from the employer, not the
> individual.  If -incoming winds up with language that obtains
> rights only from the individual and not from the employer, then
> when "work for hire" applies, IETF gets no rights (which would
> not be a good thing).

If that is true, I believe the logical conclusion is that Brian's
assertion that the IETF works with individual contributor is incorrect.
The current text means that the IETF do require participation (in a
legal sense) from organizations.

I do wish that Brian is right here, and that the IETF only works with
individual.  This seems to have been the intention in earlier documents.
I do think the current text changes this, and that this is unfortunate,
and probably not what we want.

> I am subject to "work for hire", and I do have my employer's
> permission to submit the Internet-Drafts that I author, so IETF
> does get the copyright licenses that it needs, but those licenses
> come from my employer (EMC), not me as an individual.

Right, and this is probably a rather common scenario.  The document
should be reviewed to make sure it does the right thing in this regard.
What I've seen from the discussion so far doesn't convince me that the
text is sufficiently clear.

/Simon

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