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

From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 21:03:42 -0700 (PDT)

% Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
% > 
% > > And what WG?  Internet Drafts were and are generated by Individuals w/o
% > > benefit of an associated WG.
% > 
% > Precisely my point to Grenville.
% 
% Our discussion had nothing to do with who the question of who
% *generates* I-Ds, but what makes them valid on an ongoing basis.
% 
% gja

A key point about validity is the agreement btwn author(s) and the IETF.
Once the timer expires, the ID is not valid, as an ID. The IETF has lost
its chance to "capture" the information in the IETF process. IMHO, this
includes such IETF structures as WG, IESG, ADs, IAB, Secretary, et.al.
The information reverts to the author(s).

--bill

---

From: "Melinda Shore" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 09:06:48 -0700

>From: Bill Manning <[email-masked]>
>To: Grenville Armitage <[email-masked]>
>Cc: <[email-masked]>
>Subject: Re: Topic drift Re: An Internet Draft as reference
material

> its chance to "capture" the information in the IETF process.

Maybe yes, maybe no.  I don't think that anybody
has proposed that expired drafts are to be considered
valid inputs to the standards process.  But just
because they can't be used for work in progress
does not mean that they should be disappeared, either.

There seems to be specific concern that if it were
the IETF archiving expired drafts it might be seen
as giving those documents some weight.  But what if
some other body or organization were to do the same
thing?

Melinda

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 01:40:42 +1100

Date:        Sun, 1 Oct 2000 09:06:48 -0700
    From:        "Melinda Shore" <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <004601c02bc1$9c4194c0$3c61530a@spandex>

  | Maybe yes, maybe no.  I don't think that anybody
  | has proposed that expired drafts are to be considered
  | valid inputs to the standards process.  But just
  | because they can't be used for work in progress
  | does not mean that they should be disappeared, either.

No-one is silly enough to believe that old I-Ds can be made to simply
disappear.   However, to the extent that the author has retained rights
in the I-Ds, no further copies may be made without the author's express
permission - that would be a breach of copyright.

Drafts I submit tend to be one of two forms - either they're WG product,
and are explicitly public domain, and I don't care in the slightest what
anyone does with them, forever (incidentally, those carry the "NOT in
comformance" boilerplate on the I-D, as to be in conformance I would have
to be granting some rights to the ISOC/IETF which is impossible, as being
public domain docs, I have no rights in them to grant to anyone - nor to
in any way restrict what anyone does with them).

Other drafts I send belong to me.   I allow the IETF to distribute copies
until the draft is replaced, or expires (whichever comes first).  If you
get a copy during that timeframe, you can keep it as long as you like.
But you can't make more copies.   Now I'm not going to care if someone
comes and asks you personally for a copy, and you make the odd isolated
copy, but if you (the generic you, I am not referring to anyone who happens
to be listed in a header of this message particularly) start distributing
copies in large numbers, or making them available for others to start making
copies of trivially, then you are clearly breaching copyright, and you can
expect legal proceedings to commence soon.

As I think I said in a message early in this thread - and which Bob Braden
and others have also said, or implied - much of the problem seems to be that
not enough of the historical record is being captured in RFCs, so those who
want more of the historical record kept are searching for some other method.
A better solution would simply be to go back to publishing all that should
be published as RFCs, where everything will be available forever.

Mike O'Dell commented "once it has that designation "RFC", THE IDEA IS
SANCTIFIED" as a justification for restricting what gets published as
an RFC (I think).   The current policy has been to go along with that
and more and more restrict what gets published as RFCs - basically
endorsing the sanctification.  The alternative would be to explicitly
reduce that to an absurdity, by publishing more and more which is
clearly no more than a record of the state at a particular time.

kre

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From: vint cerf <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2000 10:49:46 -0400

I don't think the issue is "weight" as much as it is the
rights to intellectual property contained within the I-D
(and here I mean intellectual property in the most general
sense of the term so as to include copyrights and also
other intellectual property rights).

At least that's where a good deal of the discussion seems
to have centered.

vint

---

From: "Melinda Shore" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 11:06:05 -0700

>From: vint cerf <[email-masked]>
>To: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>; Bill Manning
<[email-masked]>; Grenville Armitage
<[email-masked]>
material

> other intellectual property rights).

I know, but I'm not completely comfortable with that
argument.  As it's been pointed out, there are years-old
copies of expired IDs floating around even still, and
while there may be authors who are out there hunting
them down and insisting on having them obliterated, I
haven't seen that happen.

If one were to get anal about it, legally intellectual
property claims have to be actively protected in order
to remain valid.  That clearly doesn't justify making
off with somebody else's stuff when he/she isn't looking,
but for me the failure to slap around partys who are
hanging on to old drafts (and making them available
through the web) does raise some questions about what the
particular objections are.  It seems to center
specifically on the IETF making expired drafts available.

Melinda

---

From: vint cerf <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2000 11:16:31 -0400

Robert,

I think the I-D are explicitly NOT public domain. Even in WG form, they
carry rights held by the author and implicit licenses to the WG for
derivative works. To make something public domain I think you have
to take a fairly definite action or declaration since the most recent
revisions of copyright law give all rights to authors upon the creation
of the work, and the author then has to take explicit action to transfer
rights or to confer licenses.

As I recall, the idea with regard to "IETF copyrights" is to try to take a
minimalist approach in terms of erosion of author rights, consistent
with the IETF responsibility to produce evolvable standards.

Vint

---

From: vint cerf <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2000 11:32:15 -0400

in the Internet environment, and in particular in the I-D environment,
this could be particularly difficult. Maybe the search engines will help :-)

v

At 11:06 AM 10/1/2000 -0700, Melinda Shore wrote:
>to remain valid.

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 02:42:52 +1100

Date:        Sun, 01 Oct 2000 11:16:31 -0400
    From:        vint cerf <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | I think the I-D are explicitly NOT public domain.

As a general rule, absolutely, I agree.   However, drafts that I happen
to write which are WG output explicitly are public domain (they all say
that inside them).   See draft-ietf-ftpext-mlst-12.txt for a current
example.  Or any of the earlier versions of that doc, should you be
able to find them.

As usual, I probably wasn't being very clear in my message.  I referred
only to drafts I submit - I can't speak for what other authors do, or
desire.

kre

ps: the ftpext mlst draft mentioned above also raises the question of why anyone
would want to archive *all* old drafts - not having source material available
has to be a problem to historians, and others.   Having too much of it has to
be just as big a problem.   The only thing that having one of the old mlst
drafts around would achieve for posterity would be to demonstrate that I can't
count beyond 10 ... when someone pointed out that I was unable to count, an
updated draft was submitted with "twelve" changed to "fourteen" which was
really obvious to anyone was what it should have been (except apparently me).

---

From: Grenville Armitage <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2000 14:54:34 -0700

> A key point about validity is the agreement btwn author(s) and the IETF.

Once an I-D is generated, I think the author's complicity is a given
that hardly needs to be stated.

> Once the timer expires, the ID is not valid, as an ID.

And for practical purposes once it exists (which indeed the author
had some part in) an I-D's validity is independent of the author
until "the timer expires".

> The IETF has lost

Hmmm.  My original suggested meaning for 'valid' focused on what
an outside observer might deduce from the term. If your only point
of argument is that I initially used words "an IETF WG" instead of
enumerating all the various IETF bodies who might use I-Ds to
capture ongoing work, then I think that's simply argumentation for
the sake of argument. I'd like closure, not some open ended
nitpicking.

> The information reverts to the author(s).

Hmmm.. (well, modulo the fact that it is now irretrievably thrown to
the winds of random archiving across the Internet)

Of course all that may reflect what is. But personally the IETF
would be much better served if submitting an I-D wasn't some sort
of 6 month vanity press, but a recognized archive (i.e. understood
as such by authors before they submit) for scribblings of time-limited
validity.

cheers,
gja
________________________________________________________________________
Grenville Armitage                    http://members.home.net/garmitage/
Bell Labs Research Silicon Valley

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: 01 Oct 2000 15:02:27 -0700

Melinda Shore <[email-masked]> writes:

> If one were to get anal about it, legally intellectual property claims
> have to be actively protected in order to remain valid.

I could be wrong, but I've always heard that this is only true of
trademarks, and at least I don't see anything in the copyright laws in the
U.S. to this effect for copyrights.

And I'd think that a lot of people would have lost their patents if this
were true of patents.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>