Subject: Re: Topic drift Re: An Internet Draft as reference material

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 17:10:09 -0600 (MDT)

> b) violate the rights of I-D authors who allowed IETF to publish 
> their I-Ds based on the understanding that IETF would only do
> so for a short time

The claims about I-D author rights being violated by yet another I-D
archive are dishonest, silly red herrings, or jokes.

It's not merely that I-D's are already archived, albeit inconveniently
and obscurely.  Essentially all I-D's that are submitted with the
expectation something very similar to their contents will become an RFC.
Would those claiming to find relevant limits in the boilerplate or other
rights of I-D authors really have us believe that if the IESG and RFC
Editor had taken their text and published it as an RFC that their rights
would have been violated?  If not, then what "right" is violated 
by the text being kept by the IETF as an I-D instead of an RFC?

It is entirely understandable that after submitting an I-D, its author,
editor, or compiler might have second thoughts, but that's just tough.
As Ms. Shore said, anyone who speaks or writes has regrets, but those of
us who are adults don't try to revise history to hide our mistakes.

The only "right" of an I-D author that might be violated by the IETF
keeping a copy of an I-D as an I-D instead of as an RFC is the "right" to
not look like a fool or not have the world know what fraction of the
author's ideas are bad or unpopular.

Thinking about that, I can see strong commercial reasons for companies
that hope to steal the cachet of an RFC to want I-D's to disappear.  If
the Acme Widgets salescritter knew in advance that submitting a version
of Avian Carriers would not go down the memory hole if the IETF decided
it is stupid, then the salescritter might be less enthusiastic about
flogging bogus I-D's.  It's also remotely possible a trade rag "author"
might check the I-D archives the next time the Acme Widgets salescritter
announces the "submission" of wonderful Acme technology to the IETF to
see how often Acme Widget "submissions" endure.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 20:57:14 -0400

> and obscurely.  

yes, but IETF isn't (yet) maintaining public archives, so IETF doesn't
(yet) have the liability of breaking its agreement to expire the draft
after six months.

I agree that anyone who expects an I-D to completely disappear is naive.
But the real issues here are IETF's legal liability and loss of faith.

> Essentially all I-D's that are submitted with the

statistics by themselves would make that a fairly naive expectation.
but it is not really relevant.  there are folks who are quite 
willing for IETF to publish their documents as RFCs if they are approved,
but would prefer that their documents not be archived if they are not
approved.  it's sort of a "either give my document the respect it 
deserves or you can't have it at all" mentality.  and the author clearly
has the right to do that.  (though since the days of required boilerplate,
perhaps only if he limits IETF's rights to publish as an Internet-Draft). 

> author's ideas are bad or unpopular.

are you willing to accept IETF's liability should a court decide otherwise?

Keith

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From: Kent Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 19:08:10 -0700

> I agree that anyone who expects an I-D to completely disappear is naive.

It seems to me that you are simply discussing the meaning of the term
"expires".  The straightforward meaning of the term is "no longer
available in the I-D directory".  Having removed it from the I-D
directory, I would argue, the IETF has discharged it's obligation to
comply with any implied agreement to "expire" the drafts.  The IETF has 
faithfully upheld its end of that bargin.

We are now left with the issue of the legal status of the mass of
archived expired drafts.  This is an archive that could, in principle,
have been kept by anyone, not just the IETF: During it's 6 months, every
draft was published to the world, for the world to study, and anyone in 
the world could have archived it during that 6 months.

Questions for lawyers:

Is the legal status of the IETF materially different from a third-party
archiver, concerning making the archive available to the public? [eg, if
a search engine keeps cached copies of pages referring to I-Ds, and
those cached copies persist long after the I-D expires, is the search
site liable for some kind of copyright infringement?]

If there is some legal exposure, can it be mitigated by providing a
mechanism by which I-D authors of old drafts can elect to keep their 
IDs more private?

One final note -- I thought the analogy with WG emails was useful --
that is, that expired drafts should be about as easy to search as the
email archives for a WG.  But I think that would happen almost
automatically -- the archive is not going to be easy to search unless
significant indexing and organizational work is done up front -- and
the effort is actively maintained.  

The use of IDs for demonstration of prior art raises an interesting
possibility: forged or altered IDs being used to challenge patents.  
That's another reason to have a definitive archive available.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
[email-masked]                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 00:00:32 -0400

> possibility: forged or altered IDs being used to challenge patents.

interesting point.  

another possible way to solve it, independent of an official IETF archive, 
would be to have internet-drafts timestamped on submission and 
digitally signed by the secretariat.

Keith