Subject: Collective rights: Quote from US law

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:04:26 -0500

Jorge found the following text, which is the actual definition from the 
U.S. Copyright Act:

-------------------------------------------------------------
Section 101.  A "collective work" is a work, such as a periodical issue, 
anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, 
constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled 
into a collective whole.

Section 201(c).  Contributions to Collective Works. - Copyright in each 
separate contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in 
the collective work as a whole, and vests initially in the author of the 
contribution. In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or of 
any rights under it, the owner of copyright in the collective work is 
presumed to have acquired only the privilege of reproducing and 
distributing the contribution as part of that particular collective work, 
any revision of that collective work, and any later collective work in the 
same series.
------------------------------------------------------------

With collective works, one assigns the copyright to *someone*, often the 
organization under whose auspices the collection is made. It wouldn't be 
unreasonable to place the IETF trust in this role.

The conclusion of the discussion seemed to be that it's possible to define 
an RFC as a collective work (between the RFC Editor and the contributors), 
but that it didn't make sense to consider each and every I-D to be a 
collective work (some are).

So - if we call RFCs collective works, placing the (c) IETF Trust on RFCs 
makes sense; placing the (c) IETF Trust on all internet-drafts does not 
make sense.

What do people think we should do?

                    Harald

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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:33:27 +0200

> So - if we call RFCs collective works, placing the (c) IETF Trust on 
> RFCs makes sense; placing the (c) IETF Trust on all internet-drafts does 
> not make sense.
> 

"If published as an RFC, this document will be Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007)."

     Brian

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:42:40 -0500

At 1:33 AM +0200 7/24/07, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>>So - if we call RFCs collective works, placing the (c) IETF Trust on RFCs makes sense; placing the (c) IETF Trust on all internet-drafts does not make sense.
>>

Maybe:

"If published as an RFC, the RFC will be Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (YYYY)." ?

If the collective work is among the contributors and RFC Editor, we have to be clear
that the Copyright is on the end-result document.

That nit picked, I think Brian has the right idea and that ultimately we need
Jorge to tell us what the legal language is to make that work.  Having us come
up with the exact language hasn't helped much in the past.....
			regards,
					Ted

---

From: "TS Glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:16:41 -0700

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 4:04 PM
Subject: Collective rights: Quote from US law

> contribution.

Which means that each contributor must convey that IP to the IETF. Not just 
the submitter. The IETF's records process should not rely on any proofs of 
'that the submitter actually held power of attorney' when simply having some 
email based query process should suffice as 'at least an effort' at 
establishing providance and title for those sub-somponents of the group 
effort.

>In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or of any rights 
>under it, the owner of copyright in the collective work is presumed to have 
>acquired only the privilege of reproducing and distributing the 
>contribution as part of that particular collective work, any revision of 
>that collective work, and any later collective work in the same series.

except that its rare that all the members of the team meet and sign a 
document conveying interest to the group and then from the group to the 
IETF. So what then proves this?

> collective work (some are).

Uh yeah they are. The work product of the IETF's WG's is vetting - vetting 
which is focused at an initiative. That said RFC's, the Archive's and all 
documents which were not submitted by the workproduct of a single 
individuals, would by definition be collaborative works.

> makes sense; placing the (c) IETF Trust on all internet-drafts does not 

I thought that anything where there are more than two contributor's 
participating creates a collaborative work, so that includes pretty much 
anything except I-D's that are written by a single individual only. So the 
real issue is how many author's are accredited in the filing. If there is 
only one... then the work may not be collaborative eh?

---

From: "todd glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:18:32 -0700

Questions -

    1)    Is any work-product which is derived from communications between 
two or more parties an 'Individual work' or a 'collective work' because the 
copyright and release processes will be different between them???

    2)    Does work-product submitted from a single individual, but that has 
effort provided by multiple sources constitute a 'collective work' as well, 
for instance, if a single writer were to take other IP's from other IETF 
efforts, or from external to the IETF and was to include them in their IETF 
Submission, would that then be a collective work or not?

As to why? - Collective Works need ALL of the AUTHOR'S agreement's to have 
their IP's included in the work, and in the case where that right is 
assigned to the IETF TRUST, then they ***MUST*** all individually agree to 
this, no single individual MAY represent the rights of others before the 
IETF without a formal and durable Power of Attorney to act in those matters 
being in force.

Just my two cents...

Todd Glassey

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ted Hardie" <[email-masked]>
To: "Brian E Carpenter" <[email-masked]>; "Harald Tveit 
Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 4:42 PM
Subject: Re: Collective rights: Quote from US law