Subject: OT: Concordances was Re: Confirming the Nominet position

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 08:52:08 -0700

Note the Off topic pointer.  There is no protocol or engineering
in this message.  Hit D now.  This is a personal opinion.  I
am not a lawyer.  If you are still listening, I can't imagine why.

At 4:24 PM +0100 05/26/2004, Jay Daley wrote:
>
>As compilations, zone file databases are protected under EU law by
>?Database Right?. As a derivative work of the main register from which
>they are sourced, they are likely also to attract copyright protection in
>addition to or in place of database right.

There is a great deal of very detailed law on the subject of how
concordances relate to rights in the resources for which the
concordances were created.  Effectively, you have published the
entries which allow the creation of a concordance of the database/resource
all along; anyone with a recursive resolver could in turn use that concordance
data to  reconstruct as much of the original resource as they cared to it.
The change you are seeing now is that a new mechanism for iterating
through the published entries makes the construction of the concordance
easier.

Deployment of that mechanism or failure to deploy that mechanism has *no
effect* on the rights of the users to create or use concordances of the
data.  Write that down.

You have always published this data; that's the point of the DNS. 
Write that down.

The real threat in all of this is not in the DNS itself, but in the 
use of the concordance
data as a key into a different database of other resources.  That is being
addressed in a different working group (CRISP), and your engineering talent
and resources put there might be better spent. (Just an opinion).

In short, spending your time and effort to deploying a real solution (IRIS) to
the core problem (accessible user data in administrative databases), makes
sense.  Educating your government that whether or not you use DNSSEC
will make *no difference* to whether or not you publish the actual data
and will make *no difference* to the rights individuals have to make 
concordances
may also make sense.  You may not have the stomach for it, and I certainly
would understand that.

Did I mention that this was off topic, that I am not a lawyer, and that I
can't imagine why you are listening?  Good.
					regards,
						Ted Hardie

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From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 10:59:59 -0400

At 16:24 +0100 5/26/04, Jay Daley wrote:
>Here is a proper explanation of the Nominet position.
>
>3. Legal mumbo jumbo
>I'm sorry if we appear to have been hiding behind legal mumbo jumbo, this
>was not our intention.  So I need to be clear that our legal advice is
>ancillary to our view in (1) above, not the determining factor.

In preparing this response I didn't see in #1 a reason that was 
*clearly* technically based.  I.e., I suspect that "appropriate 
policy...best interests" is based in issues that are not technical. 
So perhaps what I have to say here isn't the "right" answer.

I'm at sea the moment someone brings up anything relating to legal 
issues.  Given the conflicting statements about legal opinions on 
this list, I'd ask for the lawyers to get together and come to some 
common understanding first.  After that - it can become a technical 
problem again.
-- 
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Edward Lewis                                            +1-703-227-9854
ARIN Research Engineer

Even the voices inside my head are refusing to talk to me anymore.