RE: Who owns the Internet Rules?

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

--On Thursday, April 16, 2009 12:36 -0700 Lawrence Rosen
<lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:

> John, 
> 
>> > Nothing is an RFC until the IETF says it is.
>> 
>> Actually, even that is not true.
>> See RFCs 4844 - 4846.
> 
> Are you hinting that even my crazy relatives could publish an
> RFC on April 1 and declare it an official document?

No April 1 RFC is "an official document", so, no, they could not
do that.  On the other hand, if they submitted a satirical draft
to the RFC Editor and the RFC Editor (who does not have any
authority to say things on behalf of the IETF) finds it
sufficiently amusing, it could be published as an RFC.

> No input
> from anyone else who is a part of the IETF process?

I don't understand how you get from "until the IETF says it is"
(an organizational decision) to "input from anyone ... who is
part of the IETF process".  I'm "part of the Massachusetts
process": I vote in state elections, I periodically express
opinions in other ways, and I pay a lot of taxes.  But that
doesn't imply that anything I do has Massachusetts approval to
do it.

> Why are we here? [Oh yes, I see the reference in RFC 4846 to
> "Satirical materials."]

Independent of "why we are here", the RFC Series predates the
IETF (and the IETF Trust, etc.) and has always included a lot of
documents that are not intended to be, or to be interpreted as,
standards.


> My *only* point in this thread was to point out that the
> copyrights in RFCs are jointly own by the IETF Trust that
> coordinates and on whose collective behalf the work is
> created. 

"... collective behalf the work is created" may have some legal
meaning that I don't understand, but, taken in its common-sense
meaning, no.  And the IETF Trust does not coordinate much of
anything.  It is simply a structure for accumulating whatever
rights come to it (and/or the IETF) as a consequence of the
publication process ... much more a copyright aggregator than an
author, at least as I understand those terms.

When I write a journal article that was not specifically
solicited and paid for, that article usually ends up with a
copyright notice on it that points to the publisher.  The
article isn't written for the benefit of the publisher (at least
in the plain English sense of those terms) but for some
combination of my benefit and, I'd like to believe, the benefit
of some professional audience.  In return for publishing and
distributing it (and maybe some other services) the publisher
insists on transfer of the copyright (modulo whatever rights I
may get to reserve or get back).  And every time I have gone
through that process, that copyright transfer occurs via a
document and wet signature, not by some claim that, because the
publisher made a decision to public and did some editing and
printing (which is more than the IETF Trust does), the document
becomes a joint work with the publisher as co-author.  

I suspect that there is a joint or collective work theory out
there for IETF-stream documents.  But I don't think you are
going to find it by assuming that all of the streams are the
same, that all RFCs are the same, that all RFCs are standards
whether the IETF thinks so or not, and so on.

> That is why all three RFCs 4844-4846 contain the
> following copyright notice:
> 
>      Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).
> 
> This is how RFC 4844 itself summarizes our joint effort: "This
> document describes the framework for an RFC Series and an RFC
> Editor function that incorporate the principles of organized
> community involvement and accountability that has become
> necessary as the Internet technical community has grown,
> thereby enabling the RFC Series to continue to fulfill its
> mandate."
> 
> And RFC 4846 says this: "In all cases, the ultimate decision
> to publish or not publish, and with what text, rests with the
> RFC Editor." 

And the RFC Editor isn't the IETF.  Regardless of how many times
you assert the following, it won't make that so.  And 4844 is
fairly clear about that and 4846 is even more so.
 
    john