Subject: Draft IESG Statement on Removal of an Internet-Draft from the IETF Web Site

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2012 20:00:46 -0400

The IESG is considering this IESG Statement.  Comments from the community are solicited.

On behalf of the IESG,
Russ

--- DRAFT IESG STATEMENT ---

SUBJECT: Removal of an Internet-Draft from the IETF Web Site

Internet-Drafts (I-Ds) are working documents of the IETF, its Areas,
and its Working Groups.  In addition, other groups, including the IAB
and the IRTF Research Groups, distribute working documents as I-Ds.
I-Ds are stored in two places on the IETF web site.  First, current
ones are stored in the I-D directory.  Second, current and past ones
are stored in a public I-D archive.

I-Ds are readily available to a wide audience from the IETF I-D
directory.  This availability facilitates informal review, comment,
and revision.

While entries in the I-D directory are subject to change or removal
at any time, I-Ds generally remain publicly archived to support easy
comparison with previous versions.

Entries in the I-D directory are removed as part of normal process
when it expires after six months, when it is replaced by a subsequent
I-D, or when it is replaced by the publication of an RFC.  In all
of these situations, the I-D remains in the public I-D archive.

An I-D will only be removed from the public I-D archive in compliance
with a duly authorized court order.  If possible, a removed I-D will be
replaced with a tombstone file that describes the reason that the I-D
was removed from the public I-D archive.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2012 17:44:20 -0700

> The IESG is considering this IESG Statement.  Comments from the community are solicited.

1.  Unless I've missed something, the statement seems to reflect
established practice and established policy.  Or is it changing something?

2.  I had thought that somesuch statement had already been issued, but
apparently not.  If there is a preceding document -- I can't think of
one -- then any change from it's text would be worth noting.

3.  It would be worth clarify what prompts issuing this now.

d/
-- 
 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 bbiw.net

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2012 21:29:00 -0400

I strongly urge  the IESG to be significantly more liberal in  the cases
where an I-D will be removed from the archive.

I can think of a number of cases where I'd hope that the IESg would be
cooperative:

1) the IETF recieves a DMCA take-down notice or other instrument
indicating that a third party believes an I-D infringes their copyright.
Forcing such third parties to take the IETF to court does not seem to
benefit the community.

2) An author realizes that an I-D accidentally contains proprietary
information, infringes someone else's copyright, failed to go through
external release processes for the author/editor's organization, etc.
Obviously factors like how long after the I-D is submitted might need to
be considered.

In conclusion, I believe there are a number of cases where the interests
of the community are better served by being able to ask for removal from
the archive. Being able to easily repair mistakes  is likely to
facilitate  more free discussion and more speedy updating of I-Ds.
Yes, I'm aware  that organizations other than the IETF mirror the i-ds
and some of these organizations will be less sympathetic to these
concerns.

---

From: Joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2012 20:36:51 -0700

> Forcing such third parties to take the IETF to court does not seem to

non-laywer here,

The IETF is not an ISP and does not accordingly have safe harbor
privileges. I doubt very much  that it would be appropriate to dutifully
remove content merely on the basis of a dmca takedown request.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2012 10:30:44 +0100

Without commenting on Sam's specific examples, I think the policy
should include a "generally" or "normally" weasel word, so that
the IESG can make exceptions in unusual circumstances.

It really should be unusual though. A real case some years ago
involved a dispute between an ex-employee and ex-employer about
who had the right to update a non-WG draft. The IETF shouldn't be in the
business of deciding disputes of that kind, which could happen
any time.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

---

From: Alessandro Vesely <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2012 13:20:39 +0200

The first paragraph says:

After all the groups, I'd add "and individuals".

> Obviously factors like how long after the I-D is submitted might need to

Except for I-Ds that reveal secret text, infringements should only
result from inappropriate boilerplate copyright claims.  It would be
enough to tag such I-Ds with a suitable disclaimer, in a way similar
to how the presence of errata is (not) handled.

---

From: Scott O Bradner <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2012 07:27:23 -0400

in addition
since there is no admissions control on IDs I would think that the IESG would want 
to reserve the option to remove an ID that contained clear libel or inappropriate 
material (e.g., a pornographic story published as an ID as part of a DoS attack
on the IETF) once the IESG had been given notice of such material

Scott

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2012 07:38:17 -0700

> After all the groups, I'd add "and individuals".

+1. Internet Drafts are also required for publication in the Independent Submission stream of RFCs. They are also used by individuals who make proposals that they hope will later become WG items, but are not "working documents" of the WG when they are written.

--Paul Hoffman

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2012 07:46:31 -0700

> +1. Internet Drafts are also required for publication in the Independent Submission stream of RFCs. They are also used by individuals who make proposals that they hope will later become WG items, b…

So are Independent submission RFCs:

   http://www.rfc-editor.org/indsubs.html

d/

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 4 Sep 2012 14:48:04 -0000

>non-laywer here,
>
>The IETF is not an ISP and does not accordingly have safe harbor privileges. 

Junior Lawyer here.  A quick look at the law, or even the Wikipedia
article about it
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act)
reveals that the DMCA refers to "online service providers" which in
context means whoever runs the server hosting the content.  That would
be some combination of the IETF and AMS.

If someone served AMS with a DMCA complaint, the options are basically
that they remove the allegedly infringing material, or that the party
providing the material to them, who might be the IETF or the I-D
author, provide a counternotice that the material is not infringing.
In either case, AMS is off the hook, but in the latter case, the IETF
would probably have to defend if the party sending the original notice
decided to sue.

The IETF may well be able to argue that it too is a conduit just
hosting the I-D's since I-Ds are posted by individuals using an
automated process, but that is the kind of argument that makes lawyers
wealthy, no matter who finally wins.

As far as I am aware, there's never been a DMCA notice for an I-D, and
with any luck there never will be, but in practice, a reasonable
policy is that if a proper DMCA notice (one that contains all six of
the required elements) arrives about an I-D, take it down unless the
I-D author provides a counternotice and indemnifies the IETF.

R's,
John

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2012 11:16:49 -0400

Hi.

I agree with Sam and Scott.  Let me add one more piece to that
picture:

We have spent many years saying not only "I-Ds expire" but "I-Ds
are not an archival series".   While I've gradually come around
to the advantages of the IETF maintaining an archive of old ones
and making it accessible, I think there are many reasons for not
promising that.  From the IETF's point of view, perhaps the most
important of those reasons is the seemingly-perennial argument
that we have about whether the existence of non-standards-track
RFCs is either misleading or provides an unnecessary avenue for
abuse by those who want to imply IETF approval when none exists.
We've seen the same games played with I-Ds, e.g., "post an I-D
and then advertise 'under consideration in the IETF" or even
"being standardized by the IETF".

I think the IESG should have the authority (and responsibility)
to remove I-Ds from the public archive, not just on the basis of
court orders and the like, but in response to any strong
evidence of abuse, without our having to try to enumerate all
categories of abuses in advance.  I think that such a decision
should be announced so that it can be appealed if necessary, but
that, to avoid both general annoyance/noise and DoS attacks, we
not get trapped into considering taking down a document to be a
consensus matter.  It is not an archival series and we should
not promise that it will be maintained as one.

If Counsel advises that we keep copies of anything that is taken
down so that, e.g., we can respond to court orders to produce or
authenticate it (at least unless a court of final jurisdiction
orders us to discard it), I'm find with that, but the draft
statement doesn't address the disposition of documents that are
removed from the web site at all.

I also believe that the IESG should reestablish policies that
permit WGs (or their leadership), ADs responsible for WG
documents, or submitters of individual or other-stream documents
to pre-expire them --i.e., have them moved from the I-D
directory and "active" status in the tracker.  When such
documents were posted in error or are clearly at risk of
becoming a distraction, the community is not well-served by
insisting that they remain "active" until the six months runs
out.

To repeat, the I-D series was explicitly designed to not be
archival.  Let's not change that by an overly restrictive
take-down policy.

   john

p.s. FWIW, my understanding of the DCMA is consistent with Dave
Crocker's and his note on the subject.  Andrian, as I understand
it, there is no such thing as a pre-emptive counternotice.  If
the IETF, faced with a proper DCMA complaint, decided to not
take something down, the boilerplate might become part of a "his
problem, not ours" defense, but, as Dave suggests, that is the
sort of thing on which lawyers become wealthy.   In practical
terms, unless we decide we have a liking for lawsuits, we'd
probably be much better off responding to a proper DCMA notice
by taking the I-D out of public view and then letting anyone who
believes that the draft should have stayed up sue the entity who
created the notice.

--On Tuesday, September 04, 2012 07:27 -0400 Scott O Bradner
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> in addition
> since there is no admissions control on IDs I would think that
> the IESG would want  to reserve the option to remove an ID
> that contained clear libel or inappropriate  material (e.g., a
> pornographic story published as an ID as part of a DoS attack
>> I strongly urge  the IESG to be significantly more liberal in
>> the cases where an I-D will be removed from the archive.
>> 
>> I can think of a number of cases where I'd hope that the IESg
>> would be cooperative:

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:07:51 +0200

Sam,

> Forcing such third parties to take the IETF to court does not seem to

This is knotty.

ANYONE can file a DMCA take-down notice.  Following it merely provides
safe harbor and is not always in the community interest.  The community
was disrupted because of what amounted to a bogus DMCA take-down notice
relating to the TZ database, when the NIH complied.  The IESG should
give the people who posted the draft an opportunity to respond to the
take-down notice prior to taking any action.  In the case of a WG I-D,
the IETF must take a more engaged role.

> Obviously factors like how long after the I-D is submitted might need to

It's difficult to codify policy like this in a group this large, but
except for the copyright issue in which a 3rd party may be exposed
through no fault of their own, I'd be concerned about abuse, and would
hate for us to sanction that sort of thing in text.

Eliot

---

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2012 13:22:59 -0400

Dave:

Until recently, the I-D archive was not publicly available.  It was made public to support the rfcdiff tool.  Prior to this action, the I-D archive was accessible only to the Secretariat. This IESG statement is establishing the policy now that the I-D archive is public.

Russ

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2012 13:57:36 -0400

Alessandro:

If an I-D is posted with secret text, then the secret is disclosed.  I-D are copied to many shadow repositories all over the world.  So, removing the I-D from ietf.org will not remove the secret text from the Internet.

Please explain what you mean by inappropriate boilerplate?  The I-D submission process checks the boilerplate.

Russ

---

From: Alessandro Vesely <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 10:23:13 +0200

On Tue 04/Sep/2012 19:57:36 +0200 Russ Housley wrote:
> 
> If an I-D is posted with secret text, then the secret is disclosed.
> I-D are copied to many shadow repositories all over the world.  So,
> removing the I-D from ietf.org will not remove the secret text from
> the Internet.

I figure the odds that an I-D contains secret text be reasonably low.

> Please explain what you mean by inappropriate boilerplate?  The I-D
> submission process checks the boilerplate.

For example, one of two authors might publish an I-D with trust200902
assuming the other author will be happy with that, and later find out
that that assumption was wrong.  As it formally licenses the work,
that boilerplate text may make the difference between fair use and
infringement of an exclusive right of the copyright owner --IANAL.

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 02:20:43 -0700

>The IESG is considering this IESG Statement.  Comments from the 

[snip]

>was removed from the public I-D archive.

I'll +1 the change (only for the IETF Stream) suggested by Alessandro Vesely.

Suggested text:

   An expired I-D will be removed from the public I-D archive when necessary.
   Such action will be taken by request of an IESG member, a chair of the
   working group associated with the I-D, or one of the document authors.
   If possible, a removed I-D will be replaced with a tombstone file that
   describes the reason that the I-D was removed from the public I-D archive.

The suggested text makes allowances for circumstances such as court 
orders.  I used "when necessary" and left it to the IESG to make the decision.

Note that there is an inconsistency between the above the existing 
guidelines.  Saying that an I-D has expired and distributing the I-D 
is a conflicting signal.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Vinayak Hegde <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 15:50:58 +0530

>   describes the reason that the I-D was removed from the public I-D archive.

+1
It might be prudent to add other details of the DMCA order as well. I
have seen that other websites do that.

This is a good FAQ on DMCA removal
http://www.chillingeffects.org/copyright/notice.cgi?NoticeID=627#QID130

-- Vinayak (IANAL)

---

From: Thomas Heide Clausen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 10:32:01 -0400

> http://www.chillingeffects.org/copyright/notice.cgi?NoticeID=627#QID130

IANAL either, but I can imagine valid non-DMCA reasons for the IESG wanting to remove an expired I-D, or add a tombstone file / note in its place. 

For example, I have seen examples where an IETFer (who'd been around the block a few times, and so did know better) repeatedly has held up and cited a long expired I-D claiming "Findings of the IETF show that ....", as part of his/her argument in various contexts outside of the IETF.

Empowering the IESG to be able to act, in various such situations, and not just in response to court orders or DCMA requests, is IMO a good thing.

I like Alessandro's suggestion that "An expired I-D will be removed from the public I-D archive when necessary". 

I am on the fence if some sort of "consensus for removal" among the ADs should be expected or not, though - as Alessandro's text concerns *expired* I-Ds. (It's trivial to render an *active* I-D *expired* by way of submitting a new version...)

Thomas

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 08:05:15 -0700

On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 5:00 PM, IETF Chair <[email-masked]> wrote
> was removed from the public I-D archive.

This statement doesn't actually seem to cover the case for removal
from the I-D directory, only the public archive. If you would like it
to cover the case where a court order or other action causes a
document to be removed from the public I-D directory, it probably
needs an update.  If that's covered in another document, pulling them
into a single document makes sense to me.

I support the idea that there be mechanisms for removal of IDs from
both that don't require a court order, but I don't think it should be
too simple.  I'd suggest:

a) Stream owner approval for streams outside the IETF stream
(documents identified as irtf or IAB).
b) Relevant AD for WG documents
c) IESG for individual submissions, with any AD able to put the matter
to the IESG.

There is an existing method for b as it relates to the current
directory--a working group chair replacing an editor and then having
the new editor issue a new draft. The AD should be consulted and
approve, though, if it either needs to be done more quickly than that
or it needs to relate to the archive.

c) is the most onerous because of the risk that simpler mechanisms
might be used to shut out ideas.  It might also be useful to clarify
that the appeal chain for this action follows the usual process.

Just my two cents,

Ted

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 07:51:40 -0700

>have seen that other websites do that.

The IETF can provide the reason for a removal, e.g. a DMCA order, in 
the tombstone.  The "if possible" was left in as there could be a gag 
order preventing the IETF from disclosing the facts about a removal.

Creating a perpetual I-D archive for the sake of rfcdiff is not a 
good idea as it goes against the notion of letting an I-D expire gracefully.

At 07:32 05-09-2012, Thomas Heide Clausen wrote:
>IANAL either, but I can imagine valid non-DMCA reasons for the IESG 
>wanting to remove an expired I-D, or add a tombstone file / note in its place.

Yes.  There has been a request to remove an I-D.

>For example, I have seen examples where an IETFer (who'd been around 
>the block a few times, and so did know better) repeatedly has held 
>up and cited a long expired I-D claiming "Findings of the IETF show 
>that ....", as part of his/her argument in various contexts outside 
>of the IETF.

The IETFer will now provide a long-lived URL for the expired I-D. :-)

>I am on the fence if some sort of "consensus for removal" among the 
>ADs should be expected or not, though - as Alessandro's text 
>concerns *expired* I-Ds. (It's trivial to render an *active* I-D 
>*expired* by way of submitting a new version...)

Yes.  The author has the ability to correct a mistake.  The new 
functionality makes matters more difficult for authors.  It can be 
argued that the I-D will remain available on the Internet.  There is 
nothing the IETF can do about that.  The IETF can make the matter 
easier for the author by not distributing the I-D automatically after 
six months.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Thomas Heide Clausen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 11:16:56 -0400

On 5 Sep 2012, at 10:51, SM <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The IETF can provide the reason for a removal, e.g. a DMCA order, in the tombstone.  The "if possible" was left in as there could be a gag order preventing the IETF from disclosing the facts about a removal.

I suspect that catching such things and capturing them in our procedures are the reason why the IETF has legal counsel.

> Creating a perpetual I-D archive for the sake of rfcdiff is not a good idea as it goes against the notion of letting an I-D expire gracefully.

On that, I agree fully.

> The IETFer will now provide a long-lived URL for the expired I-D. :-)

That's what has happened so far. It would be preferable if such an URL either wasn't on an IETF-sanctioned server, though. 

If archives of expired I-Ds are to exist on an IETF server, I-Ds should be clearly labeled as "These are *not* findings of the IETF, in fact, the IETF has abandoned this effort, for whatever reason, whoever pointed you here isn't keeping up" ;)

> Yes.  The author has the ability to correct a mistake.  The new functionality makes matters more difficult for authors.  It can be argued that the I-D will remain available on the Internet.  There is nothing the IETF can do about that.  The IETF can make the matter easier for the author by not distributing the I-D automatically after six months.

Yup.

Thomas

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 16:50:09 +0100

Hi Ted,

I think an I-D can be removed from the I-D directory by replacing it with
another I-D (possibly with null content, or possibly with tombstone text) using
existing process.

Cheers,
Adrian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Ted
> Hardie
> Sent: 05 September 2012 16:05
> To: IETF Chair
> Cc: IETF
> Subject: Re: Draft IESG Statement on Removal of an Internet-Draft from the
IETF
> Web Site

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 17:04:04 +0100

On 05/09/2012 15:51, SM wrote:
...
> Yes.  There has been a request to remove an I-D.

That's an interesting but not very informative statement.

In the only case I am personally aware of, in 2006/7, there
was a dispute (outside the IETF), with lawyer's letters flying
around. Eventually, in a decision supported by the IETF Counsel,
not only was an I-D version taken down, but an *earlier* version
was put back with an artificially extended expiry date. No court
order was involved, and the eventual outcome was a private agreement
between the parties (outside the IETF).

I think the IESG needs to keep the flexibility to do that, although
in all normal circumstances the answer should be "we don't do that."

    Brian

---

From: Eric Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 12:06:35 -0400

I am not at all convinced that there should be any reason, aside from a court order, that
would remove an ID from the ID archive.

In addition to the potential advantages of being able to compare earlier versions, there
is a real need to support - at some public location - what an earlier ID actually included,
for IPR and other legal reasons.

Removal of an ID from a public site - even by court order - will not remove all copies of
the ID from other (private) locations (though a court order might make it illegal to keep
any such "private" copies - helping to alleviate issues that might derive from them).  If
there remain nothing but private copies, it will be possible to produce modified versions
(for example) claiming they are "true copies" of the original ones.

I'm not a lawyer, but I would be more than a little bit leery of posting an ID if I were not
going to be in a position to show what that ID actually said at some point in the future
when I might be confronted with an alleged copy that says something different.

Bad enough we have to live with our real transgressions, without the possibility of being
obliged to live with those that almost anyone could make up on our behalf...

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Adrian Farrel
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2012 11:50 AM
To: 'Ted Hardie'; 'IETF Chair'
Cc: 'IETF'
Subject: RE: Draft IESG Statement on Removal of an Internet-Draft from the IETF Web Site

Hi Ted,

I think an I-D can be removed from the I-D directory by replacing it with another I-D (possibly with null content, or possibly with tombstone text) using existing process.

Cheers,
Adrian

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf 
> Of Ted Hardie
IETF
> > The IESG is considering this IESG Statement.  Comments from the 
> > community
> are solicited.
> >
> > On behalf of the IESG,
> > Russ
> >
> > and its Working Groups.  In addition, other groups, including the 
> > IAB and the IRTF Research Groups, distribute working documents as I-Ds.
> > when it expires after six months, when it is replaced by a 
> > subsequent I-D, or when it is replaced by the publication of an RFC.  
> > In all of these situations, the I-D remains in the public I-D archive.
> >
> > An I-D will only be removed from the public I-D archive in 
> > compliance with a duly authorized court order.  If possible, a 
> > removed I-D will be replaced with a tombstone file that describes 
> > the reason that the I-D was removed from the public I-D archive.
> >
>

---

From: Eric Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 12:08:23 -0400

+1

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Brian E Carpenter
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2012 12:04 PM
To: SM
Cc: IETF
Subject: Re: Draft IESG Statement on Removal of an Internet-Draft from the IETF Web Site

In the only case I am personally aware of, in 2006/7, there was a dispute (outside the IETF), with lawyer's letters flying around. Eventually, in a decision supported by the IETF Counsel, not only was an I-D version taken down, but an *earlier* version was put back with an artificially extended expiry date. No court order was involved, and the eventual outcome was a private agreement between the parties (outside the IETF).

I think the IESG needs to keep the flexibility to do that, although in all normal circumstances the answer should be "we don't do that."

    Brian

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:46:32 -0400

--On Wednesday, September 05, 2012 08:05 -0700 Ted Hardie
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I support the idea that there be mechanisms for removal of IDs
> from both that don't require a court order, but I don't think
> it should be too simple.  I'd suggest:
> 
> c) IESG for individual submissions, with any AD able to put
> the matter to the IESG.

At least for category (c), it might be reasonable to be more
flexible about take-down, or at least early expiration, requests
from authors than from third parties.  That flexibility might
reasonably not apply once a WG (or RG or the IAB) has started
considering the document.

If the IESG wants to assume the burden of evaluating those
considerations on a case-by-case basis, it is fine with me, but
I continue to believe that IESG members have better things to do
with their time.  To say that a different way, we should avoid
loading more and more work onto the AD job description, even
with the assent of the incumbents, so that we can hope to get
candidates for the roles who do not have full-time support for
participation in the IETF (and who have no other substantive
responsibilities to their employers or sponsors during their
terms).

   john

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:06:16 +0100

I'd be supportive of allowing the IESG to make a decision to remove I-Ds based on court orders, abuse, and other well-justified reasons.

Such events would be rare, and we should let the IESG do its job of making decisions based on available information. The statement need not and should not have an exact algorithm, because we will not be able to determine all the situations where this might be necessary. There are various abuse cases and even mistakes by the authors that in some rare cases might be something that should lead to documents being pulled. The statement should indicate, however, the reasons (such as showing prior art) why such take-downs should be rare.

Jari

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 10:50:07 -0700

> Such events would be rare, and we should let the IESG do its job of making decisions based on available information. The statement need not and should not have an exact algorithm, because we will n…

+1. I would also like to emphasize that the original statement said that things taken down would be replaced with descriptive tombstones. That is a very important feature of the proposal.

--Paul Hoffman

---

From: tglassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 11:01:15 -0700

> +1. I would also like to emphasize that the original statement said that things taken down would be replaced with descriptive tombstones. That is a very important feature of the proposal.
How would taking them down invalidate any previous licenses issued??? if 
nothing then taking the material down is meaningless since the act which 
licensed it for permanent use is irrevocable.

This was the whole point of describing the previous method as a one-way 
publishing path and it is what the problem is with any positive control 
over the IP and its licensing.

The issue is not what remains actively published but what was published 
on those previous dates and under what terms it was published. The whole 
point of taking something down is that it invalidates and revokes the 
license to use which is functionally meaningless here because of the 
original "you get to use it forever no matter what" licensing which the 
IETF has placed into control over the last 5 years or so.

As such doing anything with a public policy like this which doesn't 
address the underlying licensing is meaningless. It has no effect and is 
a waste of time since it clearly says we know something is wrong but we 
are not really going to fix it.

See my point?

Todd Glassey
>
> --Paul Hoffman
>
> -----
> No virus found in this message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 2012.0.2197 / Virus Database: 2437/5250 - Release Date: 09/05/12
>
>
>

-- 
//Confidential Mailing - Please destroy this if you are not the intended recipient.

---

From: Stephan Wenger <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 18:01:16 +0000

Hi,
I support this statement, with the additions suggested by Sam Hartman,
John Klensin, and (most importantly) Brian Carpenter.
In addition, I would suggest adding clarifying text to the extent that
I-Ds will remain to be stored in non publicly accessible form, unless
removal is required by a court order.
Stephan

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 11:02:37 -0700

Hi Brian,
>That's an interesting but not very informative statement.

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg71391.html

>in all normal circumstances the answer should be "we don't do that."

Yes.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 11:17:32 -0700

> another I-D (possibly with null content, or possibly with tombstone text) using

Hi Adrian,

That's true, and if the existing author wants to do that, this policy
is not needed at all.  The question is who needs to approve a request
to remove it if it does not come from the author.  Sorry that this was
not clear.

regards,

Ted Hardie

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2012 11:32:44 -0700

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 9:46 AM, John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote:
> from authors than from third parties.

I am fine with that, though I had been assuming that replacing an I-D
in the public directory was fast enough that it would be the default.
The problem then turns into how to remove it from the archive
directory if the author also wants that.

> That flexibility might
For third party requests to remove others' independent submissions, I
think there should be a pretty high bar.  "Open submission" is a key
part of "open standards", in my opinion, and if it becomes overly easy
to cause submissions to be removed, we run risks to our process that I
think are worse than the added load on the IESG.  If you were replying
only in regards to first-party requests, than, as I said, I'm fine
with the moral equivalent of early expiry.

The only reason I can see for making third party removal of public,
non-expired I-Ds be at the discretion of the IESG, rather than
requiring a court order, is that someone could attempt to publish
patently offensive material in an I-D as an attack.  Forcing us to pay
the legal fees for a court order would be a potential DoS, as someone
up-thread noted.  If it weren't for that, I would support court order
only.

regards,

Ted

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:59:56 -0400

> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg71391.html

Of course, there is a case to be made that, if we had a more
sophisticated posting system that enforced the few rules we
already have, it would not have been accepted and posted in the
first place.  Individual drafts are supposed to be title
draft-OneOfTheAuthorNames-foo-bar-NN.  This one didn't meet that
rule.   From the standpoint of those rules/conventions about
naming at least, it is as if I posted something as
draft-moonesamy-foobar-00 or draft-carpenter-barfoo-00 in the
hope that would get extra attention.

That said, the author in this particular case could presumably
have posted draft-vesely-spam-reporting-using-imap-kleansed-00
and then persuaded the Secretariat that it replaced
draft-ordogh-spam-reporting-using-imap-kleansed-00, thereby
causing the latter to be removed from the _active_ I-D
repository and moved off to the historical I-D archive.

    john

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2012 05:16:36 +0700

> community are solicited.

i presume that you have done your legal homework and know what you are
doing.  and i try not to play amateur lawyer.

so it seems like a good thing to me.

randy

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:12:57 -0700

Hi John,

Yes.

Yes.

Mistakes can happen.  The expiration provides, to some degree, the 
ability to forget.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:23:39 -0700

On 9/5/2012 3:16 PM, Randy Bush wrote:
> i presume that you have done your legal homework

alas, they hadn't.

d/

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2012 19:40:55 -0400

--On Wednesday, September 05, 2012 11:32 -0700 Ted Hardie
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> For third party requests to remove others' independent
> submissions, I think there should be a pretty high bar.  "Open
> submission" is a key part of "open standards", in my opinion,
> and if it becomes overly easy to cause submissions to be
> removed, we run risks to our process that I think are worse
> than the added load on the IESG.  If you were replying only in
> regards to first-party requests, than, as I said, I'm fine

I agree about the third-party requests.  If people have to
resort to legal process for them, I'd lose no sleep over it.  On
the other hand, a removal request from a WG Chair or AD for a WG
document isn't really third party, nor would be corresponding
actions by the IAB or IRTF for documents created at their
request.

> The only reason I can see for making third party removal of
> public, non-expired I-Ds be at the discretion of the IESG,
> rather than requiring a court order, is that someone could
> attempt to publish patently offensive material in an I-D as an
> attack.  Forcing us to pay the legal fees for a court order
> would be a potential DoS, as someone up-thread noted.  If it
> weren't for that, I would support court order only.

I more or less agree, but remember that a DMCA takedown request
is not a court order but has a certain amount of legal standing
in the jurisdictions in which the Secretariat, most of the
servers, the IAD, the IETF Trust, and ISOC are subject.  One
(IANAL, so not necessarily completely accurate) way to
characterize it is that it lets a recipient (potentially the
IETF) distinguish between "we just provide the service of
posting I-Ds but are not responsible for their content" and
"these are documents for which we are willing to accept
responsibility (for copyright clearance as well as conformance
with other laws)".  As long as we are willing to say "anyone can
post anything they like as I-Ds, with no prior review by 'the
IETF'", we had best decide we are a service provider and be
willing to take down on that basis -- or we better schedule the
budget increase to cover liability for copyright violations when
some third-party posts potentially infringing material and we
accept responsibility by ignoring the DMCA notice.

Again, really expert legal advice is in order here. I'm
certainly not trying to give it, but this discussion is getting
pretty far out in the weeds without that advice.   If the IESG
has already obtained it, I wish they would tell us.

   john

---

From: Alessandro Vesely <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:06:00 +0200

On Wed 05/Sep/2012 21:59:56 +0200 John C Klensin wrote:
> --On Wednesday, September 05, 2012 11:02 -0700 SM <[email-masked]> wrote:
> rule.

The I-D /was/ named after one of the author names.  Although expired,
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ordogh-spam-reporting-using-imap-kleansed
is still accessible.

> From the standpoint of those rules/conventions about naming at
> least, it is as if I posted something as draft-moonesamy-foobar-00
> or draft-carpenter-barfoo-00 in the hope that would get extra
> attention.

I removed much more than I added, so putting my name would have been
overly selfish.

> That said, the author in this particular case could presumably have
> posted draft-vesely-spam-reporting-using-imap-kleansed-00 and then
> persuaded the Secretariat that it replaced 
> draft-ordogh-spam-reporting-using-imap-kleansed-00, thereby causing
> the latter to be removed from the _active_ I-D repository and moved
> off to the historical I-D archive.

That maneuver sounds more contrived than what I did.  I thought about
posting a new version with null content, or possibly with tombstone
text, but that would still have left version 00 in place.

In order to invalidate an archived version, we'd need a process
mechanically similar to rfc-editor's "Errata".  If visually winsome,
Errata's content could then be rendered the new way as well.

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 15:35:24 -0500

> removal is required by a court order.

I must say, I find this a very strange thing to say. The original 
statement was "we will not remove anything from the archive unless 
ordered to by duly authorized court". Sam, John, Brian, and others have 
basically said, "No, we do not want that to be the policy. We want the 
IESG to give itself latitude to remove things from the archive for all 
sorts of other reasons." These aren't "additions"; they are a complete 
reversal of what we originally proposed. (Which, BTW, is fine. That's 
why we put these things out for review.) So either you do *not* support 
the statement and prefer the kinds of things that Sam, John, Brian, and 
others have suggested, or you *do* support the statement and do *not* 
support these other positions.

Speaking strictly for myself, I've found this conversation extremely 
helpful. The IESG's initial thought on this matter was that the bar for 
removing things from the archive ought to be set as high as we could get 
it so as to avoid all sorts of silly requests and DoS attacks (and, at 
least in my mind, so that the legal questions were near nil: unless an 
appropriate court forced us to, our policy was "leave it in there"). All 
of the exceptions that people are now suggesting are very interesting, 
but also bring up lots of legal questions. I'm not sure I like the idea 
of making my job harder, but I guess that's why you pay us the big bucks.

pr

-- 
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:35:24 +0900

> The IESG's initial thought on this matter was that the bar for
> removing things from the archive ought to be set as high as we could
> get it so as to avoid all sorts of silly requests and DoS attacks
> (and, at least in my mind, so that the legal questions were near nil:
> unless an appropriate court forced us to, our policy was "leave it in
> there").

please stick to it.  we have enough complexity creation already.  aside
from at&t and verizon illegally giving all our packets to the nsa, the
high bar is the best and simplest.

randy

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 08:49:54 +0200

Randy,
> high bar is the best and simplest.

I agree with your point about complexity and "sticking to it".  I
recommend a small change to accommodate most of what has been discussed.

NEW:

> An I-D MAY be removed from the public I-D archive in compliance
> with a competent legal demand.  If possible, a removed I-D will be

This leaves sufficient flexibility for the IESG to decide when a legal
demand requires the removal and when it's bogus, but otherwise leaves
the bar high.  I would suggest that Jorge review the above text for
appropriateness.

I'll also point out that if people start to game us for illegal content,
the IESG has the ability to update the policy.

Eliot

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:54:11 +0900

>> with a competent legal demand.
> demand requires the removal and when it's bogus

so the iesg will now spend their spring retreat in law school?  we have
a test for competent legal demand.  it is called a court order.

randy

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:00:36 +0200

Randy,

> a test for competent legal demand. it is called a court order.

In the case of DMCA, if you wait for a court order, you can lose your
liability shield, which has been the point that Sam and others have
raised.  There may be times when the IETF is willing to do that (had the
IETF been hosting the TZ database, perhaps it would have done so), but
it should be done consciously.

Eliot

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 16:16:37 +0900

> In the case of DMCA

i am not competent to speak to circumstances surrounding a dmca.  i am
glad you and all the other engineers here are.  sure saves the ietf
lawyer a lot of work.

randy

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:29:28 -0700 (PDT)

> glad you and all the other engineers here are.  sure saves the ietf

Bingo. And even if we were competent to assess this stuff - which we most
assuredly are not - any notion that a specific policy can be drafted that would
cover all the eventualities that could arise in the context of a DMCA notice is
preposterous on its face.

Anyone who has looked at even a few DMCA situations knows they range from
looneys with no grounds and no resources to entirely legitimate cases of gross
infringement to what amounts to a SLAPP suit.

If and when this happens the IETF will have to deal with the situation as it
presents, hopefully assisted by competent legal counsel.

The only question that need concern us at present is whether or not the
stated policy gives the IESG the necessary flexibility. It seems to me
that it does.

				Ned

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:21:44 +0200

Ned,

We are venturing into an area of rabid agreement on the premise but
disagreement on the conclusion, which I find astonishing.

> stated policy gives the IESG the necessary flexibility. It seems to me

Glad you think so, but then please enlighten the rest of us about how
the text provides this flexibility.

Eliot

---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:33:36 +0100

On 07/09/2012 07:49, Eliot Lear wrote:
> >with a duly authorized court order.
Would

"An I-D will only be removed from the public I-D archive if legally
required to do so."

fix the ambiguity?

Stewart

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 11:42:21 +0200

> "An I-D will only be removed from the public I-D archive if legally

That is where I was aiming, albeit with s/will/may/.  Again, I recommend
that Jorge review.  Nothing in this policy should REQUIRE the IESG to
act, or set that expectation.

Eliot

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 06:19:15 -0400

--On Friday, September 07, 2012 10:33 +0100 Stewart Bryant
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> compliance
> "An I-D will only be removed from the public I-D archive if
> legally required to do so."

> fix the ambiguity?

IMO, probably, But ask Jorge.  Note, however, that this opens up
another ambiguity.   If a DMCA notice, or something like it from
another jurisdiction, is received, that may not be a legal
requirement to take something down, merely a request that
presents us with alternatives between compliance and assuming
liability for not doing so.  If this restated policy requires
ignoring such requests, that is a _big_ decision.  It is also,
IMO, a dangerous and unsustainable one if we are going to
continue to permit anyone to post anything as an I-D as long as
it meets format requirements.

I still believe that this is the wrong answer -- that the IESG
(or someone) has to have discretion to take something down with
a minimum of fuss if circumstances arise that this nit-picking
about language doesn't anticipate.   Example, which would
probably be covered by "legally required" but the next one might
not:  Suppose someone posted a blatant  example of child port as
part of an I-D.  The law in some jurisdictions require that such
material be taken down (and possibly some other actions taken)
the moment we become aware of it (if not sooner).  Want to
insist that the IESG wait for a court order when that court
order might come in the form of criminal charges with severe
penalties?  Want to wait after that, until there is a conviction
(hint: that could easily result, much earlier, in a court order
to seize and take down, not the particular I-D, but our servers).

An even better answer might be to figure out why we need to
maintain a public archive of expired documents.  As someone else
said, the ability to do diffs is a pretty weak reason.  Even if
that were important, we could solve a huge fraction of the
actual requirement by adopting a model of:

	 -- I-Ds are fully public until they expire (six months,
	when replaced, or, under still-unspecified conditions,
	earlier)
	
	 -- Expired I-Ds are kept online and public for an
	additional grace period of, say, three months.  That
	allows for easy diffs.  If six months are needed instead
	of three, so be it.
	
	  -- After that, they are available on individual
	request at the discretion of the Secretariat, in
	response to court orders (which give the Secretariat no
	discretion), etc.

For most purposes, that changes the "removal" question into an
"early expiration" one -- both "early expiration" from the main
I-D directories and "early expiration of the grace period".

Just my opinion.

    john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 06:35:41 -0400

--On Friday, September 07, 2012 15:54 +0900 Randy Bush
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>>> An I-D MAY be removed from the public I-D archive in
>>> compliance with a competent legal demand.
>> This leaves sufficient flexibility for the IESG to decide
>> when a legal demand requires the removal and when it's bogus
> 
> so the iesg will now spend their spring retreat in law school?
> we have a test for competent legal demand.  it is called a
> court order.

If the IESG persists in drafting statements, even proposed ones,
that could expose the community to very large levels of
liability (see earlier comments by myself and others about DCMA
notices and assumption of liability as examples), then perhaps
such a spring retreat would be a good idea.

Sorry, but this is largely a problem of our own making.  For
years, our position was that I=Ds expired after six months and,
when they expired, they disappeared from any public repository
for which the IETF had direct responsibility.  If others wanted
to capture and keep copies forever, that just wasn't our
problem.  Indeed, it might be claimed that it violated our
rules, but we weren't obligate to enforce those rules and knew
that we couldn't.  If we had stayed with that as a policy, the
only thing we'd be discussing now was early expiration.  We
might not even be discussing that because it was widely assumed
that the IESG had the authority to expire a document for any
reason it thought sensible even though that authority was almost
never used (A Good Thing, IMO).

So now we have a public archive and the IESG feels a need to
make comprehensive policies about that public archive.  To avoid
making rules about situations we can't anticipate, we say "only
with a court order", which creates even more situations we
haven't anticipated.  Perhaps a spring retreat in law school or
better and less expensively, a spring retreat in which ADs and
selected other members of the community get to write thousands
of times on a public wall "I am not a lawyer; I will not pretend
to be a lawyer or even play one on television in the sight of
the IETF; even if I were a lawyer, that doesn't make me an
expert on copyright or patent law in multiple jurisdictions",  

:-(

   john

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 06:30:05 -0700

> act, or set that expectation.

The IESG should not be /required/ to honor a court order?

In addition, the more discretion the policy affords the IESG, the more 
it can -- unintentionally, of course -- run the risk of doing censoring.

But yes, the draft policy text needs to be vetted by counsel.

d/

---

From: Nick Hilliard <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:36:29 +0100

> The IESG should not be /required/ to honor a court order?

whose court order?

Nick

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2012 10:48:32 -0400

On Thu, Sep 06, 2012 at 03:35:24PM -0500, Pete Resnick wrote:

> ordered to by duly authorized court".
[…]
> questions. I'm not sure I like the idea of making my job harder, but

It seems to me you all made your jobs harder when you put up the
statement for contemplation.  Maybe I missed it in the many messages,
but I don't understant what problem the statement is trying to solve
(especially given that the goal was really just to restrict action to
exactly what you'd have to do not to go to jail)?  To me, the proposal
seems like an administrative rule without a great deal of benefit, but
with plenty of future opportunity for exception handling (and the
associated rats and holes).

Best,
A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 07:48:08 -0700

On 9/5/2012 7:51 AM, SM wrote:
...
> Creating a perpetual I-D archive for the sake of rfcdiff is not a good
> idea as it goes against the notion of letting an I-D expire gracefully.

+1

Let's not forget there was a reason for expiration.

I'm OK with the archive being public so long as at least the authors can 
remove an ID *without needing to provide a reason*.

Yes, removal from the IETF site will not expunge copies from the entire 
Internet, but the IETF site should set the example here, and respect the 
original intent of allowing an ID to expire.

Joe

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 16:32:29 +0100

>> idea as it goes against the notion of letting an I-D expire gracefully.

Speaking as a document reviewer for both Gen-ART and the Independent
Submission stream, and for that matter as a generic reviewer of various
WG documents, I consider the I-D archive to be an invaluable resource.
Looking back to see when a particular change was made can be quite
important.

Speaking as an author of I-Ds, I find the archive very useful when trying
to figure out if an idea is new, or tracking back from a WG mail archive
to an I-D that is discussed therein.

Basically, the archive noticeably enhances the way I work on IETF
documents.

Also, I think there is a definite benefit to having a *public* archive
of potential prior art. Anyway who suspects prior art exists in an old
I-D has the possibility of searching for confirmation. If there was no
public archive, only a subpoena would find the prior art.

> Let's not forget there was a reason for expiration.

Expired != invisible

Also, expiration, as a fact of experience, does not prevent I-Ds
being widely cited. I was quite embarassed at one point to discover
that draft-carpenter-metrics (expired 11/1996) was being cited as if
it had some authority, and I can assure you that its absence from any
public *.ietf.org directory did nothing to prevent the citations.
That's one example among hundreds, no doubt.

> remove an ID *without needing to provide a reason*.

Why? I-Ds are public speech. Generally, you can't erase public speech.
If I decide next week that this message was stupid, I can't erase
it from the mail archive. Why are I-Ds different?

Sometimes there might be valid reasons (like "I broke the copyright rules")
but I think you need to state a reason.

> original intent of allowing an ID to expire.

I think making it clear that the archive contains expired documents is
necessary, but expiry by obscurity isn't going to work.

    Brian

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 08:43:00 -0700

...
>> Let's not forget there was a reason for expiration.

Expired = no longer *published*.

IMO, the "expires" indication on an ID indicates the expiration of the 
ability of the ISOC to publish the draft.

So IMO the ISOC is then violating the terms of submission of a doc if it 
posts it publicly in perpetuity.

...
> necessary, but expiry by obscurity isn't going to work.

It worked for a very long time. If you're now claiming it cannot work, 
you need to consider the potential effect on the ID process.

If IDs are published forever, ***WHY BOTHER WITH RFCS***?

Joe

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 08:45:28 -0700

PS - to note an astonishing concept:

> Looking back to see when a particular change was made can be quite

It's not always about what is best for *you* or for other reviewers.

It's about what encourages a more open exchange of ideas.

If the community doesn't think that ID expiration serves that purpose 
anymore, fine. However, let's make this decision on *that* basis.

Joe

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 08:56:01 -0700

> It's not always about what is best for *you* or for other reviewers.

Actually, it is.  The documents are issued by the IETF to facilitate 
public discussion.  It's the only reason to have the mechanism.

> It's about what encourages a more open exchange of ideas.

Having access to previous versions of a document often greatly 
facilitates discussion of it and later documents.

Having restricted access to the I-D archive was extremely problematic. 
Having easy access is extremely helpful to the community.

d/

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:03:47 -0700

> public discussion.  It's the only reason to have the mechanism.

There are reasons not to have this too.

As I noted, if the IETF publishes IDs, why bother with RFCs?

What other publishing arena keeps its drafts public?

Joe

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:21:31 -0700

> As I noted, if the IETF publishes IDs, why bother with RFCs?

It's difficult to imagine that you mean that as a serious question, but 
just in case:

      You are asking whether there is an important difference between a 
circulating mechanism that has no review, approval or quality control 
processes, versus one that has all of those vetting and refinement 
attributes?

      And by the way, formally, I-D's are not "published".  That's a 
semantic point, but apparently it's important for this discussion.

d/

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:29:17 -0700

On 9/7/2012 9:21 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:
...
> semantic point, but apparently it's important for this discussion.

At lease one of the ISOC's boilerplates states:

       "This document may not be modified, and derivative works of it
       may not be created, and it may not be published except as an
                                             ^^^^^^^^^
       Internet-Draft."

The term "published" is used throughout the process.

Web postings are often considered "published".

Joe

---

From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2012 21:17:32 +0300

> As I noted, if the IETF publishes IDs, why bother with RFCs?

In addition to what Dave said, the target audience of drafts are IETF participants. The target audience of RFCs varies, but in the usual case it's implementers. So drafts might have statements like "we should decide whether this MUST is necessary", but that would be inappropriate in an RFC.

Because our processes are not fast, people end up implementing from drafts. This is risky business, because implementations of draft-…-01 may not interoperate with implementations of draft-…-02. If you implement -01 you're always at risk that your implementation will become obsolete and then you'll have to worry about all those deployed products. 

RFCs put an end to the series of drafts, requiring a new series of drafts to change.

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 11:37:17 -0700

At 08:43 07-09-2012, Joe Touch wrote:
>IMO, the "expires" indication on an ID indicates the expiration of 
>the ability of the ISOC to publish the draft.

This raises the question of what "expires" means.

>So IMO the ISOC is then violating the terms of submission of a doc 
>if it posts it publicly in perpetuity.

An I-D made available through ietf.org has:

   "Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
    document authors.  All rights reserved."

>If IDs are published forever, ***WHY BOTHER WITH RFCS***?

The I-D mentions that:

   "Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
    and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
    time."

The above question comes to mind.  The IETF could spare itself the 
expense of a RFC Editor to process IETF Stream documents.  That's 
approximately US $933,000 a year.

Yes.

If I am not mistaken, the I-D archive referred to in the draft 
statement belongs to the IETF Trust.  Does the IETF Trust have a 
policy about the "DMCA" which has been mentioned in this thread?  On 
an unrelated note, It is strange that the IETF Trust hasn't had a 
meeting since March.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2012 18:52:39 -0700

> This raises the question of what "expires" means.

At the least, if IDs are published publicly forever, then "expires" is 
no longer meaningful and the entirety of that notion needs to be 
expunged from the ID process.

Joe

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2012 22:36:09 -0400

> At the least, if IDs are published publicly forever, then "expires" is no
> longer meaningful and the entirety of that notion needs to be expunged
> from the ID process.

But you haven't addressed SM's comment. The point is that you and I have
different views of what it means for a draft to expire.

You seem to think it means something like "expunged from the record, and no
longer available for viewing."

I think it means "no longer current for the purposes of work and
discussion."

And I think those are very different things.  The fact that expired drafts
used to not be available for public viewing on the IETF site does not, by
itself, mean that that was or is the intent of expiration.

Barry

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2012 20:58:08 -0700

On Sep 7, 2012, at 7:36 PM, Barry Leiba <[email-masked]> wrote:

> But you haven't addressed SM's comment. The point is that you and I have different views of what it means for a draft to expire.
> 
> You seem to think it means something like "expunged from the record, and no longer available for viewing."

I seem to think it means what it wk ways has.  The desire to change that is the basis of this thread. 

> I think it means "no longer current for the purposes of work and discussion."

What can that mean if it remains available to the public?  What purpose does such an automatic timeout have if it is left up? IMO, none. 

> And I think those are very different things.  The fact that expired drafts used to not be available for public viewing on the IETF site does not, by itself, mean that that was or is the intent of expiration.

That is exact what it meant. Or are you claiming that it was a coincidence that this entire time that derafts were removed in sync with that expiry?

Joe

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 09:14:09 +0100

Joe,

...
> That is exact what it meant. Or are you claiming that it was a coincidence that this entire time that derafts were removed in sync with that expiry?

It may be what some people thought it meant, or wished it meant.

And yes, it was intentional that you wouldn't find them in the *active*
drafts directory after expiry.

The factual reality is that I-D's have always been more or less perpetual,
given that anonymous FTP has existed longer than any I-D. Admittedly the
record is spotty for drafts earlier that about 1995, when HTTP became a
major factor (but I suspect you could find them with gopher etc before HTTP).
The difference today is that we are sort-of admitting officially that
obsolete drafts can be found, and that this is useful.

The word "expired" is perhaps not ideal; "obsolete" or "out of date" would
perhaps be more precise, but it's probably too late to change it now.

   Brian

---

From: Eric Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2012 07:02:08 -0400

Keeping I-D's around forever is incredibly important form a historical, technical, and legal perspective. They people understand how we work, think, and develop protocols (history). They help people what was tried and did or did not succeed (technology). And they provide a record of the state of the art at a particular point in time (legal).

--
Sent from a mobile device. Sorry for typos or weird auto-correct. Thank IETF LEMONADE for mobile email! See <http://www.standardstrack.com/ietf/lemonade/>

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2012 13:47:58 +0200

> Keeping I-D's around forever is incredibly important form a historical, technical, and legal perspective. They people understand how we work, think, and develop protocols (history). They help peopl…

+1.  I have used rfcdiff with drafts from the 90s, and that was very useful.

I wonder why some people think "expired" means "purged from the face of the earth".  Let's see:
 expire |ɪkˈspaɪ(ə)r|
 verb
 1 [ no obj. ] (of a document, authorization, or agreement) cease to be valid, typically after a fixed period of time: the old contract had expired.

See, I have this expired passport in front of me, and it is every bit as accessible to me as it was when it still was valid.  
I can pull it out of the drawer as much as I want, show it to my friends, etc.
It is just expired.
And there is no confusion whatsoever about that fact: It actually says so on page 3.

Now about removing I-Ds from public view: This has no bearing whatsoever on how we express expiration.  
Drafts may need to be removed from view when they aren't expired yet.  So there is no need to discuss expiration under this headline.

Back to the actual subject:
I believe the policy should be, exactly in these words:

"Internet-Drafts will be removed from the archives only when this is really, really, necessary.
The determination whether this is really, really, necessary lies with the IESG.
The usual appeals process applies."

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 07:19:29 -0800

On 9/7/12 7:58 PM, Joe Touch wrote:
> What can that mean if it remains available to the public?  What
> purpose does such an automatic timeout have if it is left up? IMO,
> none.

It seems to me that the "timeout" takes the draft out of consideration.
If someone wants to have a discussion about it, it needs to be revised.

I've looked at old drafts for background material for current work.
They're useful.

Melinda

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 11:51:11 -0700

On 9/8/2012 1:14 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
...
> given that anonymous FTP has existed longer than any I-D.

It has always been the case that some sites have violated the copyright 
and explicit instructions of IDs.

> obsolete drafts can be found, and that this is useful.

Admitting that there is piracy is not the same as the IETF posting them 
publicly on their site.

> perhaps be more precise, but it's probably too late to change it now.

Nothing about an ID is inherently obsolete or out of date after 6 months 
except its being publicly available on authorized sites (up until now).

If we remove that rule, then the notion of expiration is outdated.

If it's not too late to change the "they are removed from the IESG site" 
rule, it's absolutely not too late to remove the "Expires:" indication 
on all IDs published as we go forward.

Note - I don't agree that past IDs should be posted after expiration 
without the author's consent. They were submitted with that 
understanding, and post-facto changing it by the IETF is not appropriate.

Joe

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 11:55:05 -0700

> It seems to me that the "timeout" takes the draft out of consideration.

A new draft supercedes that timeout.

And if they're "useful", then you're admitting that continued discussion 
can occur after 6 months.

At which point there is no meaning to expiration. Any note regarding how 
long the discussion of a draft should occur would be on the mailing list 
anyway, and thus no longer would belong on the document.

---

I'm baffled by the notion that posting IDs forever is OK, but that 
simply removing the "Expires" statement is so controversial.

Joe

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 10:59:52 -0800

> except its being publicly available on authorized sites (up until now).

I think this is absolutely incorrect.  Internet Drafts are IETF
documents, and expiration changes the relationship between the draft
and the IETF.  I have to say that I think it's terribly unprofessional
not to hang onto archival material and frankly it's in the interest
of the IETF as an *open* standards organization to keep archival
material accessible.

When you're working on a problem that's been around forever and
still hasn't been solved (like, oh, I dunno - firewall/NAT traversal?),
easy access to expired drafts is an enormous help.

Would you be more comfortable if there were some sort of visual
flag that a draft had expired?

Melinda

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 13:53:34 -0700

Hi Joe,
>understanding, and post-facto changing it by the IETF is not appropriate.

I would rephrase the above as whether it is appropriate to take 
someone's work and post it as your own or use the work.  For the 
former, I don't think it is appropriate.  For the latter, the author 
has given the IETF change control over the work.  I'll ignore the 
exceptions.  That does not mean that the author should not be 
credited for the work.  If I am not mistaken it is IETF practice to do so.

"An expired I-D may be unexpired when necessary to further the work 
of the IETF, including IETF liaison with other standards 
bodies".  The IETF Trust has a retention policy of forever for 
I-Ds.  It is possible to use the override in extreme cases.  That 
does not mean that things should be done without the author's consent.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 18:36:05 -0700

On 9/8/2012 11:59 AM, Melinda Shore wrote:
> not to hang onto archival material

Draft != archival

Or do you keep copies of all versions of papers you publish, including 
the ones submitted for review? In case lawyers might need it, or for the 
benefit of the public?

> and frankly it's in the interest

Agreed.

> easy access to expired drafts is an enormous help.

The needs of the community - including the lawyers - do not outweigh the 
rights of the author or the agreement they make with the IETF to date.

The original point of having drafts expire seems to have been forgotten 
here. That's a pity. It did have a reason, and it was useful.

> flag that a draft had expired?

If you post it, it's not expired. There's no point in claiming otherwise.

Joe

---

From: Robert Raszuk <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2012 13:00:02 +0200

> someone's work and post it as your own or use the work.  For the former,
> I don't think it is appropriate.  For the latter, the author has given
> the IETF change control over the work.  I'll ignore the exceptions.
> That does not mean that the author should not be credited for the work.
> If I am not mistaken it is IETF practice to do so.

Actually regarding reusing the former drafts we have been discussing 
this in 2008 at depth when one draft reused most of the text of another 
draft.

The end result was that technically and legally it is appropriate. 
Reference section 3.3 of BCP78 / RFC5378.

However while the above documents do not mandate it I very much agree 
that it is in good taste to first ping the original authors about your 
intentions to extend and build on top of their idea.

R.

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Sep 2012 18:43:47 -0000

>the bar high.  I would suggest that Jorge review the above text for

Let's say I write to the IESG and say this:

  Due to a late night editing error, draft-foo-bar-42 which I
  submitted yesterday contains several paragraphs of company
  confidential information which you can easily see are irrelevant to
  the draft.  My boss wants it taken down pronto, even though he
  realizes that third parties may have made copies of it in the
  meantime.  I will probably lose my job if it stays up for more than a
  few days.  Thanks for your consideration.

Is this the response?

  You didn't make any legal threats, and now that we know the
  situation, we wouldn't believe any legal threats you might make in the
  future, so you better check out those burger flipping opportunities.

What was wrong with the original version which gave the IESG the
latitude to remove an I-D if they feel, for whatever reason, that it
would be a good idea to do so?  If the IESG were so screwed up that
they started deleting I-Ds for bad reasons, no amount of process
verbiage would help.

R's,
John

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 09:33:47 +0200

Hi John,

>   future, so you better check out those burger flipping opportunities.

No, the response is that we refer you to our policy.  As an open
organization we do not remove information once posted, except under
extraordinary circumstances.

> would be a good idea to do so?  

> If the IESG were so screwed up that

Certainly, but let's not start from the wrong place to begin with. 
Let's also set expectations that the IESG may be used to clean up after
other peoples' messes.  They have enough to do.

And again, this is best developed with counsel.

Regards,

Eliot

---

From: David Borman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:24:23 +0000

On Sep 8, 2012, at 8:36 PM, Joe Touch <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Or do you keep copies of all versions of papers you publish, including the ones submitted for review? In case lawyers might need it, or for the benefit of the public?
> 
> The needs of the community - including the lawyers - do not outweigh the rights of the author or the agreement they make with the IETF to date.
> 
> The original point of having drafts expire seems to have been forgotten here. That's a pity. It did have a reason, and it was useful.

The original reason for expiring drafts, along with giving them long,
complicated names that includes the word "draft", was to keep them
from being referenced as if they were standards, based on experience
gathered from the short lived IDEA document series.  I don't think
that having an archive of expired drafts weakens that original goal.

			-David Borman

> If you post it, it's not expired. There's no point in claiming otherwise.

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---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 11:26:29 -0700 (PDT)

> extraordinary circumstances.

Exactly. This sort of thing is wh a policy is needed, although I note in
passing that the folks at this hypothetical might want to read up on the
Streisand Effect.

> other peoples' messes.  They have enough to do.

That is if anything an understatement. 

> And again, this is best developed with counsel.

A very emphatic +1 to this.

				Ned

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Sep 2012 14:52:27 -0400

> passing that the folks at this hypothetical might want to read up on the

Note that I phrased it as a polite request, not a threat.

> A very emphatic +1 to this.

Sure, but keep in mind that it's one thing to minimize legal risk, 
is not the same as minimizing cost or complexity, or doing what's best for 
the IETF and the community.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:07:11 -0400

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 11:26:29AM -0700, [email-masked] wrote:

> Exactly. This sort of thing is wh a policy is needed

I attempted to hint at it already in this thread, but frankly, this
sort of thing is why a policy _is not_ needed.  The IESG has that
discretion already, and I would prefer to trust their judgement than
to write a policy governing all future action, thereby running the
risk that we'll have overlooked something and having a resulting
problem with policies down the road.

I do not understand this nearly constitutional obsession with writing
down policies for everything we do and don't do.  It turns us into a
bureaucratic process slaves for no benefit I can see.

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:14:54 -0700 (PDT)

> Note that I phrased it as a polite request, not a threat.

I don't see that as especially relevant: There have been plenty of cases where
a polite request called attention to something that would otherwise have been
ignored, although of course the ones that get reported at
http://www.thestreisandeffect.com/ tend to be the ones where bad behavior
was involved.

> the IETF and the community.

The narrow goal of minimizing the immediate legal risk is hardly the only, or
even an especially good, reason to seek advice of counsel. Counsel is there to
assist you in understanding the legal implications of your possible choices and
then in implementing the choice you make. They are not there to make your
decisions for you.

				Ned

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 22:21:16 -0700

On 9/10/2012 8:24 AM, David Borman wrote:
...
> gathered from the short lived IDEA document series.

It was also to encourage authors to post half-baked* ideas without 
having them persist - either as standards, or in general as something 
the author needed to continue to defend.

 > I don't think

It weakens both goals. A key complaint has been that the doc disappears 
from an IETF site. Neither the length nor the name has been an impediment

Joe

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 09:10:33 -0400

--On Monday, September 10, 2012 15:07 -0400 Andrew Sullivan
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> > No, the response is that we refer you to our policy.  As an
>> > open organization we do not remove information once posted,
>> > except under extraordinary circumstances.
>> 
> I attempted to hint at it already in this thread, but frankly,
> this sort of thing is why a policy _is not_ needed.  The IESG
> has that discretion already, and I would prefer to trust their
> judgement than to write a policy governing all future action,
> thereby running the risk that we'll have overlooked something
> and having a resulting problem with policies down the road.

Or, to be more specific, that we will encounter a situation that
no one quite anticipated, know perfectly well what the rational
and appropriate action is, and find that we can't take it
because we established policies that tied our hands.  

> I do not understand this nearly constitutional obsession with
> writing down policies for everything we do and don't do.  It
> turns us into a bureaucratic process slaves for no benefit I
> can see.

I've said this before, but one of the things that used to
distinguish the IETF from other standards bodies is that we
operated with good sense and leadership discretion as our
guides, spending as little time as possible on the specification
and adoption of rigid procedures.  We believed and behaved as if
IESG and IAB positions could be filled on a part-time basis,
needing people to dedicate a day or two a week from their
regular jobs, not require that they devote full-time to those
positions and do the rest of their jobs (if any) in their spare
time.   When someone showed up and said "I don't really know
anything about the Internet and almost nothing about
engineering; I'm just a procedures guy and I wasn't to help", we
would help him understand that he was in the wrong place.

We might have responded to claims that more procedures make
things easier in cases like this by noting that handling the
actual number of take-down requests a year on a case-by-case
basis would take years to reach the break-even point with the
number of IESG hours that have presumably been spent following
this long (and predictable) thread, much less the costs to the
community of participating in it.   We might also have suggested
the possibility of the IESG delegating the work to some other
group or committee -- if there are ever so many requests that
the IESG would find the time it takes to evaluate them
burdensome, we might be happy with a small committee (volunteer,
IESG-designated, chosen at random, or a combination and ideally
including Counsel) and subject to appeal on the basis that what
can be taken down can be put up again).

Clearly the IETF has changed.  My colleagues at ANSI, INCITS,
and JTC1 would have claimed that it was inevitable with growth
(and maybe with age).  And maybe I'm just old and nostalgic.
But I suggest that, if we need rigid procedures like this, the
debates it takes to get to them, and to the full-time
"standardizer" leadership to which history should teach us that
they ultimately lead, we probably have the wrong organizational
and decision-making structures and need to look forward to
structural reforms that will make the post-Kobe ones of the
early 1990s look like a minor adjustment.  Or we can voluntarily
turn the trend around, one step at a time, starting with
rejecting this proposed statement in favor of discretion,
flexibility, and intelligence (and definitely not a statement/
policy of even more complexity) and maybe even including "do we
really have resources for this" among the criteria used to
evaluate the creation or continuation of WGs.
 
best,
    john

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 11 Sep 2012 13:59:31 -0000

>  Or we can voluntarily

+1

If the IESG doesn't have the native intelligence to figure out how to
deal with a removal request based on the facts of the specific
request, we have a problem no set of rules can solve.  (Personally, I
don't think we have that problem.)

It might be useful to ask Jorge to prepare a note about dealing with
DMCA notices which are not court orders, but do require a response.
Or since the DMCA has been in effect for 14 years and we have yet to
get the first notice, we could save time and money drop the topic
unless and until the issue arises.  

There are a whole lot of hypothetical threats that the IETF might have
to deal with someday, or not.  Life is not long enough to make plans
for all of them.

R's,
John

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 21:41:53 +0200

> rejecting this proposed statement in favor of discretion,

I'm not privy to the circumstances that caused the original proposal to come up.
Maybe the reason was that the IESG *wants* its hands bound so there is no further need to waste time on such decisions (e.g., because the policy discourages or can be used to discourage requests of this kind in the first place).

But this is all speculation without further background.
And I'm not that interested in the subject anyway.
(I *am* interested we don't use it as an excuse to break the I-D archive.)

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: [email-masked] (Martin Rex)
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 02:59:05 +0200 (CEST)

> I think it means "no longer current for the purposes of work and

I fully agree to the latter.

Expunging I-Ds that are older than 6 months looks like a silly idea
to me.  Nothing in "Note Well" indicates that an IETF contribution
that is not published as RFC or regurgitated as a successor I-D
will be automatically un-contributed from the IETF.

Actually, to me the Note Well says just the opposite.
There are numerous I-Ds that are idle for > 6 month (even WG documents)
and there are also numerous abandoned I-Ds (WG documents and individual
submissions).  I consider it perfectly reasonable to keep them as easily
accessible as IETF mailing list archives to the community so that
any existing contribution can be easily found and reused whenever
anyone feels like it.

I consider it a matter of self-evident courtesy to contact the original
author(s) before submitting a new I-D that incorporates elses I-D (or RFC),
independent of whether that document is active(I-D)/published(RFC) or
expired(I-D).

An expired or abandoned individual I-D might be an indicator that the
author(s) did not have the time/energy/endurance to carry it through
to RFC, not necessarily that the document (or technology described by it)
is not mature or does not exist.  I expect that a number of expired I-Ds
describes an installed base that is alive and kicking.

-Martin

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:08:18 -0700

> will be automatically un-contributed from the IETF.

Nothing in the Note Well, but there is specific text in the ID 
Guidelines (written by the IESG):

http://www.ietf.org/ietf-ftp/1id-guidelines.txt

8.  Expiring

    An Internet-Draft will expire exactly 185 days from the date that it
    is posted on the IETF Web site (<http://www.ietf.org/id-info/>)
    unless it is replaced by an updated version (in which case the clock
    will start all over again for the new version, and the old version
    will be removed from the I-D repository), or unless it is under
    official review by the IESG (i.e., a request to publish it as an RFC
    has been submitted)...

I.e., this is not a matter of "interpretation".

If you want to change the rules, then it cannot apply to past IDs unless 
authors give explicit permission, because the IETF would be changing the 
terms of this statement.

Joe

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 23:13:09 -0400

> Nothing in the Note Well, but there is specific text in the ID Guidelines
> (written by the IESG):
>

'tis, apparently, because you are still interpreting it differently to how I am.

There's nothing in the quote above that says that the expired document
will not be available *in the archive*.  It says that it will be
removed *from the repository*, which it is... and the text you cite
later goes on to talk about the tombstone file that replaced it in the
repository, which we can easily see when we go to the datatracker
entry for an expired I-D.

And then the statement you cite further goes on to say this:

   An expired I-D may be unexpired when necessary to further the work of
   the IETF, including IETF liaison with other standards bodies.  Such
   action will be taken by request of an IESG member, a chair of the
   working group associated with the I-D, or one of the document
   authors.

That *clearly* implies that it's not *gone*, else how could it be
unexpired when necessary, by anyone's request?

I'll also note, Joe, that you are the *only* one arguing this point.
Does anyone agree with Joe?  If not, it seems fair to say that it
looks like you're well in the rough here.

Barry

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:32:41 -0700

Hi, Barry,

On 9/12/2012 8:13 PM, Barry Leiba wrote:
> will not be available *in the archive*.

There's nothing that says it won't be available by Santa Claus delivery 
either. However, the document states how things will be made available, 
and how that will change upon expiration.

> unexpired when necessary, by anyone's request?

Nobody is debating whether the IETF can/should have an archive. The 
question is whether that archive should be public - which effectively 
negates the concept of taking the doc out of the I-D repository.

And I see you selectively omitted the rest of that paragraph:

    Such a request may be overridden; e.g., a chair of the
    working group associated with the I-D will be notified if an author
    requests unexpiration and may request that the action not occur.
    This request should be sent to [email-masked] (using the
    suggested subject line "Resurrect I-D <filename>") and should come
    from an author, a working group chair, or an IESG member.

I recognize the IETF might change this policy, but I want to be clear 
that I don't consider this is ambiguous to date.

If the IETF wants to put all old IDs on a public site, I consider that 
equivalent to unexpiration, and the authors must be given the right to 
opt-out.

Joe

---

From: [email-masked] (Martin Rex)
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:01:56 +0200 (CEST)

> and how that will change upon expiration.

While the 6-month timer (or any earlier I-D update!!) will, in fact,
change how the *IETF* distributes and promotes a particular I-D (version),
there is actually *NO* limitation in what folks downloading I-Ds
with the URLs from the i-d-announce  I-D Action: EMails do with
any of the I-Ds that they download.

When I startet mirroring I-Ds in 1995, I did so by processing the
I-D announce Emails, rather than mirroring the IETF ftp server,
because (a) I did want to retain old I-Ds of WG document that
I was actively participating in, and I had no desire to obtain
the tombstone files.

>     from an author, a working group chair, or an IESG member.

This describes how _one_ very specific IETF document repository
(of active I-Ds) is managed.

> that I don't consider this is ambiguous to date.

I *never* understood this to be any kind of polic, but rather a
description of the current procedure, deliberatly chosen by the
secretariat and server admin how to process and make available
I-Ds for download.

Since 1995, the location&(favorite)protocol moved around a few times:

    ftp://ds.internic.net/
    ftp://ftp.ietf.org/
    http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
    http://www.ietf.org/id/

I never understood the submission of a successor I-D or creation
of a tombstone I-D by the secretariat to imply un-publication or
un-contribution of an earlier or expired I-D.

Personally, I consider the possibility to diff arbitrary RFCs and I-D
version from the past through the tools.ietf.org interface extremely useful.
Similar to being able to browse IETF mailing list archives.
Not being able to browse old IETF WG mailing list archives that have been
hosted by other organizations is sometimes a problem.  (there are many
interesting discussions and information in the archives, many of
which are still quite relevant today).

> equivalent to unexpiration, and the authors must be given the right to 

You're asking for an opt-out from "Note Well" here.  I strongly object
to such a change of IETF policy.

Several I-Ds, and in particular abandoned/expired I-Ds were originally
cometing proposals, and only one or a few of them was/were selected to
become adopted/published as RFCs.  That doesn't mean that the other
proposals were useless, flawed or not being actively discussed
on IETF mailing lists.  Just the opposite.  I-Ds are often regular
parts of WG mailing list discussions, they're just managed/distributed
in a fashion that differes from Mailing list archives.

-Martin

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 23:26:08 -0700

On 9/12/2012 11:01 PM, Martin Rex wrote:
> change how the*IETF*  distributes and promotes a particular I-D (version),
> there is actually*NO*  limitation in what folks downloading I-Ds

At least one limitation is here:

             c.         Pre-5378 Material.  In some cases, IETF 
Contributions or IETF Documents may contain material from IETF 
Contributions or IETF Documents published or made publicly available 
before November 10, 2008 as to which the persons controlling the 
copyright in such material have not granted rights to the IETF Trust 
under the terms of RFC 5378 (“Pre-5378 Material”).  If a Contributor 
includes the legend contained in Section 6.c.iii of these Legal 
Provisions on such IETF Contributions or IETF Documents containing 
Pre-5378 Materials, the IETF Trust agrees that it shall not grant any 
third party the right to use such Pre-5378 Material outside the IETF 
Standards Process unless and until it has obtained sufficient rights to 
do so from the persons controlling the copyright in such Pre-5378 
Material.  Where practical, Contributors are encouraged to identify 
which portions of such IETF Contributions and IETF Documents contain 
Pre-5378 Material, including the source (by RFC number or otherwise) of 
the Pre-5378 Material.

Note that the "standards process" is defined in a way that includes 
archiving, but does not explicitly include publication:

             b.         IETF Standards Process.  The term IETF Standards 
Process has the meaning assigned to it in RFC 5378.  In addition, the 
IETF Trust interprets the IETF Standards Process to include the 
archiving of IETF Documents in perpetuity for reference in support of 
IETF activities and the implementation of IETF standards and specifications.

So it's not a slam dunk that you have the rights you think for every 
I-D; you definitely don't have those rights for IDs published before Nov 
10, 2008 since the copyright was not transferred to the ISOC/IETF or 
their Trustees.

Joe

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 02:30:54 -0400

--On Wednesday, September 12, 2012 23:13 -0400 Barry Leiba
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> There's nothing in the quote above that says that the expired
> document will not be available *in the archive*.  It says that
> it will be removed *from the repository*, which it is... and
> the text you cite later goes on to talk about the tombstone
> file that replaced it in the repository, which we can easily
> see when we go to the datatracker entry for an expired I-D.
> 
>    An expired I-D may be unexpired when necessary to further
> the work of    the IETF, including IETF liaison with other
> standards bodies.  Such    action will be taken by request of
> an IESG member, a chair of the    working group associated
> with the I-D, or one of the document    authors.
> 
> That *clearly* implies that it's not *gone*, else how could it
> be unexpired when necessary, by anyone's request?

Barry,

Without trying to figure out whether or not I agree with Joe,
the key question has never been, IMO, whether or not the IETF
has the right to _keep_ expired documents.  Keeping them is
clearly necessary to un-expire them, as you note, and has a
number of other significant advantages and useful properties.
As far as I know, a file of expired I-Ds have been maintained
since I-Ds were introduced as a tool.

But nothing in the above, nor in the text you cite, requires
that _keep_ imply "guarantee to have available for retrieval
over the network by any interested party, with no requirement
for a special request".  It seems to me that it is only the
latter that is of interest here and only the latter that is the
subject of the proposed policy.   "Remove from public archive"
does not imply "it is gone, forget it ever existed" either, only
making it inaccessible for retrieval except perhaps in response
to other court orders or for other good causes that might be
permitted.

I don't have an opinion or intend to make any claim as to which
this part of the discussion turned fishy, but the smell of red
herring does not help advance discussions.

   john

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:02:54 -0700

On 9/12/2012 11:30 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
> for a special request".

It's interesting how this line of analysis entirely ignores pragmatics.

It has been noted by a number of folk that public access has repeatedly 
been demonstrated to be... useful.

That's why they were made accessible.

d/

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:19:53 -0700

> That's why they were made accessible.

PirateBay believes this too, and helps make movies available for public 
access, honoring pragmatics.

Good luck with that line of reasoning.

Joe

---

From: t.p. <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:18:05 +0100

When I read the original IESG statement, I thought it sloppily worded,
since it did not use the same terminology as in
 http://www.ietf.org/ietf-ftp/1id-guidelines.txt
which has been cited below.

I then wondered if the sloppy, as I saw it, wording might reflect less
than precise thinking in the semantics, and I think that the subsequent
posts have born that out.  There are a lot of not-so-corner cases that
need considering.  For me, the 'public I-D archive', as the statement
calls it, is of great value; some I-Ds keep doing U-turns and I need to
go back and see what has been there before.  Also, I may want to
incorporate some material from a years old I-D that never got adopted.
And so on.

So I believe that everything should stay in that archive unless there is
a very good reason for it not to; court order but not that alone  I
would add either or both of IESG vote (as for the approval of an I-D,
DISCUSS, ABSTAIN etc) and IETF Consensus.

Tom Petch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry Leiba" <[email-masked]>
To: "Joe Touch" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "IETF" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 4:13 AM
Subject: Re: Draft IESG Statement on Removal of an Internet-Draft from
theIETF Web Site

> > Nothing in the Note Well, but there is specific text in the ID
Guidelines

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:16:53 -0400

--On Thursday, September 13, 2012 00:19 -0700 Joe Touch
<[email-masked]> wrote:
 
>> It has been noted by a number of folk that public access has
>> repeatedly been demonstrated to be... useful.
>> 
> PirateBay believes this too, and helps make movies available
> for public access, honoring pragmatics.
> 

Let me try that a different way.  Suppose someone were to
propose that ISOC increase the subsidy to IETF sufficiently to
drop all registration fees.  That would certainly be "useful".
It would be useful to those who have to pay those fees out of
their own pockets, increasing the costs of attendance and making
it harder to attend.  It would be useful to those who have to
justify travel budgets and expenses.   One might even suggest
that it would be useful to everyone who wasn't interested in
using the rising costs of IETF meetings to keep people out.

It would perhaps be even more useful to offer a distance-based
cash subsidy to anyone who has to travel more than, say, 3000
miles to an IETF meeting.  That would not only be useful to
individuals, but would be useful in balancing out the
differential cost effects of meeting location choices and hence
in improving geographical balance in meetings.

Are there pragmatic reasons to not do either of these useful
things?  Sure there are.  But they would definitely be
pragmatically useful.

The questions about the public archive aren't "do people find
this useful?" but "does the utility of having the archive public
outweigh the costs and risks?"   And, if the answer to the
second question is even only "maybe", "can we analyze the real
needs and determine other ways to meet them, such as by keeping
expired drafts available for a relatively short time after
expiration rather than forever, with authors having an opt-out
option?".

best,
    john

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 13:31:52 -0400

>>>>> "Joe" == Joe Touch <[email-masked]> writes:

    Joe> On 9/5/2012 7:51 AM, SM wrote:
    Joe> ...
    >> good idea as it goes against the notion of letting an I-D expire

    Joe> +1

    Joe> Let's not forget there was a reason for expiration.

    Joe> I'm OK with the archive being public so long as at least the
    Joe> authors can remove an ID *without needing to provide a reason*.

    Joe> Yes, removal from the IETF site will not expunge copies from
    Joe> the entire Internet, but the IETF site should set the example
    Joe> here, and respect the original intent of allowing an ID to
    Joe> expire.

I find myself in agreement with Joe here.
I'm kind of horrified that this discussion is still going on.

If I write that super-offensive porn in the form of an i-d that Scott
warned about can we all find something else to mail about?:-)

---

From: Hector Santos <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 13:48:23 -0400

I find the archives very useful, especially when you have your own I-D 
history and contribution to WG works perhaps.  It helps to show 
different views, the synergism, the competitive engineering views, the 
history, etc behind the final development of WG work.

Whenever I do find a need to reference them in the eDiscussion, I will 
make sure I parenthetically note  they are expired information.

My input is limited due to legal reasons and try to keep with public 
domain technology exchanges and communications.

I can understand if an expired I-D touches base with some level of IP 
that may be conflictive in the future, i.e. someone does a patent 
search/research and finds prior art in an expired I-D and it may be 
advantageous to them to have it removed from the archives.  However, 
this is what the lawyers and courts are for.  I'm sure the IETF/IESG 
archive keepers can also make judgment calls but I don't think it will 
be harmful to keep them around until it became a legal issue and like 
everything else, dealt on a case by case basis.

I will say that I like to believe (maybe I am naive) the IETF/IESG 
does represents the community at large and I like to believe it 
represent even the "Small Guys" that really is not interested in the 
politics and battles.

-- 
HLS

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:04:29 -0800

> access, honoring pragmatics.

I'm not sure I understand this analogy.  Are you saying that there are
IPR issues related to making expired drafts available?

Melinda

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 11:27:22 -0700

> IPR issues related to making expired drafts available?

And since we've had a public archive of expired drafts for quite awhile, 
where have the purported problems been, that would justify this lengthy 
thread?

d/

---

From: [email-masked] (Martin Rex)
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:28:19 +0200 (CEST)

Joe,

> I-D; you definitely don't have those rights for IDs

We're NOT talking about rights that were transfered from the document
author to arbitrary third parties here, but about rights that were
given to the IETF ("IETF contribution"), and which have never been
time-limited.

So archival and making accessible I-D contributions past the "expiration"
of an I-D is perfectly legal for the IETF, unless the I-D contains an
explicit copyright notice to the contrary (most I-Ds from 199x do not
seem to carry any copyright notice at all).

Where you are _correct_ is, copy&pasting parts of such an old I-D
or the whole document into new documents will in fact require contacting
the original author(s)/copyright holder(s) and obtain permission,
the Note Well provisions likely will not be sufficient, at least for those
old I-Ds. (it is not just a matter of courtesy, but a requirement).

I assume the latter is what rfc5378 is supposed to fix.

-Martin

---

From: "Cullen Jennings (fluffy)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:35:46 +0000

I like the whole and +1 to it. I can see the pros and cons of make "drafts" actually go away but given it is impossible to get rid of a draft from the internet, all we end up with in the current situation are the cons and none of the pros.

I do have one suggested change 

OLD
> with a duly authorized court order.  

NEW
> The IETF Chair may decide to removed an I-D from the public I-D archive. 

We have better things to do than argue which courts we might accept court orders from or what a court order is so I suggest we just let the chair do the right thing. The chair will understand the goals of the IETF and have legal advice available to them.  If the wrong thing happens, we can fix it after the fact by putting the ID back.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:59:18 -0700

>> The IETF Chair may decide to removed an I-D from the public I-D archive.

This defines the IETF Chair as Chief Censor, with no written policy 
guidance.  That is, deletion is at the whimsy of the Chair.

Is that really what we (and the Chair) want?

Given possible legal implications of claimed unfair treatment of a 
document, that's pretty onerous exposure for the Chair.

d/

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:08:22 -0400

> Is that really what we (and the Chair) want?

I very much agree.  I'm happy with the decision being the consensus of
a board, but not giving it to an individual.

Barry

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:10:51 -0700

> a board, but not giving it to an individual.

Not that you've said something to exclude this, but I want to make sure 
we don't lose the second part:

      I believe we /do/ need a written policy that has been reviewed by 
legal counsel.  Even with a group -- versus individual -- we should not 
create possible charges of censorship up to the personal whims of the 
moment.

d/

---

From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:25:56 -0700

Dave,

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 03:10:51PM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:
> 
>      I believe we /do/ need a written policy that has been reviewed
> by legal counsel.

I think the lengthy discussion that we have seen on this topic proofs that
we should NOT have a written policy.

Deal with this on a case-by-case basis seems the most efficient way until we
hear that the IESG spends more time arguing on a particular case than the
IETF community does on a written policy.

David Kessens
---

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:43:01 -0700

David,

> we should NOT have a written policy.

It shows a tendency of the active IETF discussants to resist doing the 
work of settling on policy for the IETF.  That's quite different from 
demonstrating a lack of /need/.

Essentially none of the enlightened discussion on this thread considered 
legal ramifications of potentially arbitrary censorship by a public 
group such as ourselves.

In other words, I saw the /actual/ implication of the thread as making 
it crystal clear that we do /not/ want a collection of amateurs 
formulating ad hoc censorship policies on the fly.

(Forgive me for underscoring this, but I think the original policy draft 
that was floated to the community was a good demonstration of this 
danger.  Although I happened to like the details of what was floated, 
the fact that it had not been reviewed by counsel prior to being made 
public is quite troubling.)

> IETF community does on a written policy.

For an organization in the business of writing global standards, we are 
remarkably resistant to doing the thoughtful and deliberate policy work 
of writing standards for ourselves.

Instead we tend to prefer the whimsy of personal adhoc-racy, with its 
typical dangers of inconsistency and incompleteness.

d/

---

From: David Kessens <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:54:52 -0700

Dave,

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 03:43:01PM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:
> 
> Essentially none of the enlightened discussion on this thread
> considered legal ramifications of potentially arbitrary censorship
> by a public group such as ourselves.

Aren't you going a little overboard in hyperbole here ?

David Kessens
---

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:04:45 -0700

> Aren't you going a little overboard in hyperbole here ?

you mean by claiming the discussion was enlightened?

the rest was offered as an observation and reporting of what I believe 
to fact, in factual language.  if you see hyperbole in any of it, please 
explain.

d/

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:20:29 -0400

--On Thursday, September 13, 2012 15:10 -0700 Dave Crocker
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>>> This defines the IETF Chair as Chief Censor, with no written
>>> policy guidance.  That is, deletion is at the whimsy of the
>>> Chair.
>>> 
>> I very much agree.  I'm happy with the decision being the
>> consensus of a board, but not giving it to an individual.
> 
> 
> Not that you've said something to exclude this, but I want to
> make sure we don't lose the second part:
> 
>       I believe we /do/ need a written policy that has been
> reviewed by legal counsel.  Even with a group -- versus
> individual -- we should not create possible charges of
> censorship up to the personal whims of the moment.

I'm not sure, Dave.  I see the theoretical risk, but the number
of times that problem has occurred in the past is, I believe,
zero.  I'd be more concerned about it if we were talking about
removing active documents rather than taking something out of
the publicly-available archive of expired documents.   And a
decision by the IESG to remove a document would presumably be,
like all other IESG decisions, subject to appeal.   

If the IESG started taking down documents just because they
didn't like them, I'd also think we'd quickly try out the recall
procedure for the first time.  But, again, the IESG has had many
years of experience with I-Ds they don't like (and many such
documents), during most of which time no one questioned their
ability to remove a document from public view (active or
archived) and, AFAIK, we have seen absolutely no abuse of that
type.

I'd be ok with a "written policy that has been reviewed by legal
counsel" if I thought there were even reasonable odds of its
adequately covering all the cases.  But I fear that such a
policy would exclude some important case and thereby get the
IESG in trouble as we tried to work with (or work around, or
revise on an emergency basis) a policy that turned out to
prevent us (or even the IESG or IETF Trust) from exercising good
sense and doing what is either obviously right or as advised by
Counsel when Counsel is presented by a particular situation.

Proposal: I think it would be fine to have a policy in which:

(1) A document would be taken down as quickly as
	possible in response to a legitimate court order with
	approval of Counsel.
(2) A document to which, in the opinion of Counsel, the
	IETF might not have clear copyright title, and for which
	a DCMA take-down notice or equivalent was received
	unless the IESG, with advice and consent of Counsel,
	advised against such a takedown.
(3) The IESG could take anything else down for cause
   at its discretion after:
	(3.1) Seeking and receiving advice of Counsel
	(3.2) Announcing intention to do so, and the cause,
     on the IETF-announce list and allowing a brief 
     period for objections.
	(3.3) Considering any advice and objections before
   	making a final decision.
   (3.4) Subject to the above, the IESG is encouraged 
     to look with favor on requests to remove already- 
     expired documents from the public archive from the 
     party responsible for the document (authors of 
     individual drafts; WGs for WG drafts).  We 
     recognize that such removal doesn't cause the 
     documents to disappear from the Internet, but 
     responsible parties making such requests about
     their own documents presumably have reasons that 
     we should treat respectfully.
(4) Any of those actions would be subject to appeal if
	members of the community felt there were important
	issues that had not been considered.  An appeal could
	request that the advice from Counsel be made available
	to the community.  The IESG would be required to either
	comply with that request or explain why not.

I don't like it --my personal position is much closer to Joe's
or Sam's-- but, if there is consensus that we have to have a
written policy, one like the above at least doesn't tie our
hands when a situation arises that we haven't anticipated.
While there is some possibility of DoS attacks embedded in it,
it remains important that we haven't seen huge numbers of these
requests (or even small numbers).  Indeed, one of my fears about
the amount of discussion we've had (and any formal policy at
this point) is that it may encourage such requests.  Too late to
worry about that now.

best,
   john

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Sep 2012 23:56:03 -0000

>a board, but not giving it to an individual.

So give it to the IESG and we can stop arguing about it.

I have to say, the urge to post a few I-D's consisting of snuff porn
is nearly irresistible.

R's,
John

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Sep 2012 23:59:16 -0000

>create possible charges of censorship up to the personal whims of the 

Censorship?  Sheesh.

The IETF is not the government.  We have no obligation to anyone to
publish anything, nor can we keep anyone from publishing anything on
the 99.99999% of the Internet that the IETF does not control.  

As I think I've said several times before, if we think the IESG would
start gratuitously deleting stuff, we have much worse problems than
any policy statement could solve.

R's,
John

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Sep 2012 00:25:13 -0000

>demonstrating a lack of /need/.

The IETF has been around for 26 years, and has had, I gather, zero
removal requests to date.

If that doesn't demonstrate lack of need, what would?

R's,
John

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:23:44 -0700

> given to the IETF ("IETF contribution"), and which have never been

The "expires" term and corresponding entire text of the ID submissions 
guidelines suggest otherwise.

> seem to carry any copyright notice at all).

I've already pointed out text that, e.g., someone might use to make the 
case to the contrary.

Finally, in the US, lawyer isn't who would decide this; a jury would.

> I assume the latter is what rfc5378 is supposed to fix.

There are several variants of issues that apply, at least three I recall:

	pre 1994
	1994-2008
	2008-now

This isn't the first time this issue has been discussed on this list.

RFC 5378 is intended to address reuse of material, as you suggest - not 
whether that material can be publicly posted.

Joe

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:14:15 -0700

> IPR issues related to making expired drafts available?

Yes. Depends on the IDs, when they were authored, and which version of 
the boilerplate they contain.

Joe

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Sep 2012 03:40:36 -0000

>the boilerplate they contain.

Can you give a concrete example of an I-D with this problem?  I don't ever
recall a time when the grant of rights to the IETF had a time limit.

R's,
John

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:23:36 -0700

There were times when there were no rights granted explicitly, at least. 
I indicated the three ranges in a previous mail.

Joe

---

From: [email-masked] (Martin Rex)
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 07:10:04 +0200 (CEST)

> I indicated the three ranges in a previous mail.

In which case the Note Well concludently applies to the I-D contents,
which seems to have first appeared on www.ietf.org around 2001,

  http://web.archive.org/web/20010413091132/http://ietf.org/overview.html

and slightly extended in 2002:

  http://web.archive.org/web/20020605140239/http://ietf.org/overview.html

primarily refering to the IETF process described in rfc2026 section 10:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-10

  10.2, 10.3, 10.3.1 (2), 10.3.1 (5), 10.3.1 (7)

  10.3.1.  All Contributions 

   7. The contributor represents that there are no limits to the
      contributor's ability to make the grants acknowledgments and
      agreements above that are reasonably and personally known to the
      contributor.

      By ratifying this description of the IETF process the Internet
      Society warrants that it will not inhibit the traditional open and
*>    free access to IETF documents for which license and right have
*>    been assigned according to the procedures set forth in this
*>    section, including Internet-Drafts and RFCs. This warrant is
*>    perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its
*>    successors or assigns.

So which specific part of "including Internet-Drafts and RFCs"
and "This warrent is perpetual" caused your impression that
there was a time-limit on an I-D contribution?

-Martin

btw. rfc2026 10.3.1 (2) looks like an explicit non-policy for dissemmination
or termination of dissemination to me:

   2. The contributor acknowledges that the ISOC and IETF have no duty
      to publish or otherwise use or disseminate any contribution.

I would be OK with a single person from (IESG member or IETF Chair)
quickly decides about suspending dissemination of a document based on
personal judgement and that the IESG wiggles out by themselves an
informal procedure (rather than a formal policy) for safeguarding
the process (from bias and abuse).  This cuts into their time budget
and seems to not be a concerningly frequent occurence to spend
much polish on it at this point.

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:35:26 -0700

Note well, as you noted well, does not go back to the beginning of all IDs.

I.e., this is a tangled mess of different copyrights, different note 
wells, etc., and it's not as simple as "it's the IETF's right" to do 
anything except - maybe - going forward with a new copyright statement 
for IDs.

Joe

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 06:39:42 -0400

--On Thursday, September 13, 2012 23:59 +0000 John Levine
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Censorship?  Sheesh.
>...
> As I think I've said several times before, if we think the
> IESG would start gratuitously deleting stuff, we have much
> worse problems than any policy statement could solve.

+1 
Exactly.

The jump from "what do we do with the range of
seemingly-legitimate request from an outside party to remove a
document from public view" to "if give flexibility, the IETF
might use it to start removing (or censoring) documents they
don't like" seems incredible to me.  

     john

---

From: tglassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 06:27:04 -0700

> recall a time when the grant of rights to the IETF had a time limit.
They dont - and this is the problem. It means that there is no revision 
control in the license and NO ONE HAS TO USE OR IMPLEMENT ANY SPECIFIC 
SET OF SERVICES.  It also means that there is no way to pull anything - 
even stolen or unauthorized materials once licensed.

Todd
> Version: 2012.0.2221 / Virus Database: 2437/5267 - Release Date: 09/13/12
>
>

---

From: tglassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 07:24:12 -0700

On 9/13/2012 9:23 PM, Joe Touch wrote:
> There were times when there were no rights granted explicitly, at 
> least. I indicated the three ranges in a previous mail.
>
> Joe
>

For instance - how do you deal with an ID which was originally published 
under one set of IP rights and another later one - or a derivative work 
which is published under a separate set of rights - which functionally 
contravenes or sets aside those original rights authorizations?

This is a serious issue.

Todd

---

From: tglassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 07:36:39 -0700

> On 9/13/2012 10:10 PM, Martin Rex wrote:
I think Joe is right here. What the real issue is is simply that you 
have no actual way of proving #7 and this process is so bad it fails to 
meet the basic IP Licensing Process Rules that *** ALL *** commercial 
and academic providers are tied to in the real world so this is more of 
the IETF's actions  about its ability to create RIGHTS in a legal sense 
for anyone to anything it cannot formally prove it has legal power of 
attorney over.

If you dont own it - granting a third part rights to something over an 
electronic transport is actually a criminal act AFAIK.

Todd

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 10:38:37 -0400

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 07:24:12AM -0700, tglassey wrote:
> 
> For instance - how do you deal with an ID which was originally
> published under one set of IP rights and another later one - or a
> derivative work which is published under a separate set of rights -
> which functionally contravenes or sets aside those original rights
> authorizations?
> 
> This is a serious issue.

Indeed, it is, and if anybody would provide examples where we've had
this problem, I would be standing in line to argue that indeed we need
to make a policy and write stuff down.

Instead, the best anyone comes up with is (1) artificial examples of
stuff that might happen someday maybe if someone does something wrong
and (2) one-off cases that are incredibly tricky anyway.

In response to (1), I say this is a problem we don't have.  We have a
poor track record with protocols for which there is no obvious
immediate need (indeed, even when there's an obvious immediate need,
we often screw it up).  Why would policy be different?

In response to (2), I say that hard cases make bad law.  They're all
going to be exceptions anyway.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: "Bradner, Scott" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 15:21:51 +0000

I don't think that the Note Well note has much to do with what Joe started talking about

we have had this discussion before

quite a few years ago (pre tools) I suggested moving "expired" IDs to an "expired IDs" directory
rather than removing them from the IETF public repository as well as posting all the old
expired IDs in the same directory (changing only the filename to prepend "expired-")

seemed like a good idea to me & to many other people, for the reasons people find the tools ID archive
useful & the IESG at the time said to move ahead

Steve Coya started the (long) process f pulling the old IDs from backup tapes 

as he was finishing that process a new IESG was seated and the new IESG was not as in 
favor of the idea and wanted a fuller mailing list discussion (there had been a short
discussion when I proposed the idea)

there were a few people (Joe was one) that felt that IDs were published under the rights implied
in rfc 2026, which said that IDs expired, and, thus, the IETF did to have the right to not remove them
(there fact that other repositories existed did not change the IETF's rights in their opinion - in at least
one case someone (I think Bill Manning) sent letters to some of those archives asking that their 
ID be removed)

with support from the then IETF lawyer, I suggested that there be a way for a ID author to
request that their ID be removed from the expired IDs directory but that idea did not carry the
day and the expired IDs directory idea died

then, at some later point, the tools function showed up - I do not think I was still on the 
IESG at that point so I do not know if the IESG discussed the question

I think this is a very useful service (for history of how the technology evolved 
and for prior art searches in patent cases) and think that pretending that anything 
published on the Internet ever quite goes away is not realistic.

Scott

---

From: Lawrence Conroy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2012 14:56:25 +0100

Hi Scott, folks,
 with due deference to Joe Touch & Bill Manning, whenever I have created/requested publication of an I-D, it never occurred to me that I was actually withdrawing the rights I had signed up to after six months (i.e., insisting on removal). That seems a novel reading of the boilerplate/2026.

There were times people have had to refresh a draft before it disappeared (with precious few changes), just to keep them published.
That always struck me as bonkers, and am roundly happy that/if expired drafts don't evaporate with the season.
I can't be alone in this -- these docs may not be current, but having a trail of drafts NOT take up gigabytes on [some] people's hard drives is good.

As for Scott's comments/efforts to have an expired-draft directory -- amen to that, for both reasons.
(I hadn't realised that Steve had just about done this; good chap, who's sorely missed).

It is VERY useful to be able to search through drafts to see how we got here, AND to see things that were explored and abandoned.
It's also useful to be able to check when things were published relative to applications; having that information potentially go away was/is a nuisance.

IMHO:
If authors insist, OK -- the expired draft is toast (although it being replaced by a published note that it has been deleted would be good).
Otherwise, why would/should the IESG decide to remove a document?

... which is a long way of saying: +1

all the best,
  Lawrence

---

From: tglassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2012 07:08:32 -0700

>> published on the Internet ever quite goes away is not realistic.
The issue isnt whether the publications are available in an archive 
taking up space but whether the IP licensing rights to the content of 
that draft are persistent through a revision process or not. i.e. 
whether that right evaporates with the new publications then anyone 
implementing the protocol must also upgrade as well to stay in proper IP 
licensing state  or it persists.

Further if an IETF Draft is expired and there are support issues (from a 
contractual basis between parties who sold code implemented on those 
standards to a relying party) what happens to that contract?

One of the things this group has done is to ignore the practices of the 
real-world and its time this was addressed.  Code implemented from these 
publication standards is tied to the flow and protocol practices defined 
therein and its a real issue.

Todd

> Version: 2012.0.2221 / Virus Database: 2437/5270 - Release Date: 09/15/12
>
>
>

---

From: tglassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2012 07:11:11 -0700

> to make a policy and write stuff down.
I want to clarify what you are asking for in this statement - what 
specifically would satisfy this request here?

Todd

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2012 23:46:14 -0700

> It is VERY useful to be able to search through drafts to see how we
> got here, AND to see things that were explored and abandoned.

Thieves find it very useful to have what they steal. That doesn't 
legitimize their theft.

Utility can determine whether it's worth the effort/expense to run a 
public archive, but your utility never undermines my rights as an author.

Joe

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:33:33 -0700

> public archive, but your utility never undermines my rights as an author.
Non-lawyer here...

An authors rights are not entirely exclusive. e.g. 17 U.S.C 107 applies.

---

From: [email-masked] (Martin Rex)
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:55:49 +0200 (CEST)

Joe Touch wrote:
> Lawrence Conroy wrote:

You're still seriously confusing things.

An I-D contribution transfers perpetual (i.e. irrevocable) redistribution
rights to the IETF -- at a minimum since rfc2026 (Oct 1996) and
1id-guidelines.txt pointing to rfc2026 section 10.  For copyrighted
contents, the perpetual, irrevocable transfer of specific rights is
actually the norm, and an extraordinary, time-limited lease of rights
would have to be negotiated and mutually agreed to in order to apply.
(in German legalese the term is "Erschöpfungsgrundsatz").

The management of the online I-D repository and the expiration of
documents in there has NOTHING whatsoever to do with that transfer
of rights.

Surely an author can decide to re-publish the I-D contents under
different licenses somewhere else or later.  But that does not
impair the rights previously granted to the IETF in any way.

What is necessary, however, for the transfer of rights according to
rfc2026 section 10 to have happened, is that the I-D submitter was
in posession of (or entitled to) grant/transfer these rights.  
Only when the I-D submitter did not have that rights when he submitted
the document, would require the IETF to stop re-distribution the I-D
when it became aware of this (and found itself unable to retroactively
obtain the necessary rights from the rightful owner).

-Martin

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Sep 2012 18:24:43 -0000

>public archive, but your utility never undermines my rights as an author.

We're very deep into Junior Lawyer territory here.

You might want to review RFC 3978, section 3.3a, in which contributors
make a:

      perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide
      right and license to the ISOC and the IETF under all intellectual
      property rights in the Contribution:

This is unrelated to how long I-D's stay in the public archive.  If
you're not willing to accept those terms including the perpetual and
irrevocable part, you really shouldn't be submitting I-Ds or sending
mail to IETF mailing lists.

R's,
John

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:28:56 -0700

> We're very deep into Junior Lawyer territory here.

I'm not. I'm simply refuting *any* argument that starts with "because 
it's useful to the community".

There are other arguments - that lawyers will make - that depend on the 
particular boilerplate used, when the ID was published, whether 
click-based copyright transfer holds up, and so forth.

But utility doesn't drive the law. There are rights -rights of the 
author, and rights of the copyright holder - which are protected here, 
and they trump any perceived benefit to the community.

Joe

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:38:04 +0200

On Sep 19, 2012, at 22:28, Joe Touch <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I'm simply refuting *any* argument that starts with "because it's useful to the community".

Interestingly, these kinds of arguments are the only ones I'm interested in.

Until there is a court decision impacting this usefulness (or one can be reasonably expected), the legal angle is simply irrelevant.

(Just keeping the thread alive so it doesn't seem that everybody agrees with the strangely luddite position taken here.)

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Sep 2012 22:31:06 -0000

>it's useful to the community".

Could you answer the question, please?  Are you saying that you are
unaware, or do not believe that you have already given the IETF a
permanent license for all of your I-Ds and all your other IETF
contributions, which means it can publish them any way it wants
whether you like it or not?

This horse left the barn so long ago that the barn has long since
been torn down and replaced by a parking lot.

R's,
John

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:43:01 -0700

> whether you like it or not?

I definitely have IDs that predate the new policies, and did not 
transfer rights to the IETF for those.

> been torn down and replaced by a parking lot.

So could you answer this question - do you pirate DVDs too? That horse 
also left the barn, and presumably wild horses determine what you think 
is both legal and appropriate.

Joe

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:49:21 -0400

--On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 23:38 +0200 Carsten Bormann
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> Until there is a court decision impacting this usefulness (or
> one can be reasonably expected), the legal angle is simply
> irrelevant.
> 
> (Just keeping the thread alive so it doesn't seem that
> everybody agrees with the strangely luddite position taken
> here.)

Carsten,

Without completely agreeing with Joe (I don't), let me suggest
that the above may be the wrong way to look at this.

First of all, the "court decision impacting this..." argument
should be approached like any other risk-benefit analysis.   If
things were to get into a court and we were to lose, the
consequences could be nasty indeed.  While it is possible that a
judge might say "well, you were bad and shouldn't be doing this,
but I won't punish you if you promise to clean up your act in
the future", it isn't terribly likely.  If things were to get to
that point, prompted by a legal action by someone who could
actually claim to have been damaged by the current policy, it is
far more likely that the IETF would end up feeling significant
pain, possibly accompanied by penalties severe enough to prevent
us from keeping and getting the insurance on which we depend in
the future.

I personally don't consider it very likely that someone would
actually sue or convince some appropriate prosecutor to come
after us.  But, however one assesses the likelihood of that
happening and of that party winning, I think an attitude of
"don't worry about it until that happens and we lose" would
represent severely bad judgment.

Perhaps more important from my point of view, the IETF depends
on a social contract with its participants.  For many years,
participants had reason to believe that "expire after six
months" meant that the IETF would not publicly facilitate, or
directly provide public access to, expired I-Ds.  They also had
reason to believe that any rights they gave the IETF by posting
a document as an I-D did not extend beyond the IETF especially
after that six months -- that anyone else who wanted to make use
of the material would have to come and discuss it with them.
Whether that view was generally held or not is an almost
meaningless question: I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of
IETF participants, and even that of I-D authors, didn't give the
issue a moment's thought.

That same set of assumptions mostly applied even after that
changes that led to the current BCP 78/79 language: the IETF
Trust was granted (non-retroactively wrt earlier documents) the
rights to do a number of things that the community might need,
but there was no explicit assumption that all of those things
_would_ be done unless the community necessity (not just
convenience or wishes) were clear.  Again, opinions differed
about what was reasonable and appropriate in the normal case (an
issue the IPR WG definitely did not reach a consensus conclusion
about) and the evidence is (and was) that that vast majority of
IETF participants still didn't care enough to pay attention.

But that is precisely where the social contract becomes
important.  BCP 78 clearly gives the IETF the right to take a
document you have written without asking you, remove your name
from it, and publish it, possibly with modifications of which
you might not approve, under someone else's name.  That just
doesn't happen, not because the written rules prohibit it (or
because the IETF Trust is certain those provisions would hold up
in court), but because there is general understanding that it
would be in bad taste.  Equally important, many of us would
respond to such an action, at least one taken without a very
good and clear reason, by deciding that the IETF is not a place
where we care to do work any more.  The "contributions", at
least from those thus offended, would stop.  And, to the extent
that those contributions, and the credibility of the
contributors as a group, were important, the IETF would be in
serious, perhaps fatal trouble.

So, like you, I'm really not concerned whether Joe's arguments
are on firm legal ground or not even though I completely reject
the idea of "let's keep doing it until court to which we have to
pay attention tells us that we are wrong".   But I am concerned
that he and other authors of I-Ds, especially I-Ds that long
predate RFC 5378, made good-faith assumption, based on practices
at the time, about how their documents would be handled
post-expiration.  I think that, as a community, we ought to
respect those assumptions more than saying, effectively, "we are
going to maintain a public archive no matter what commitments
you thought were made to you because we can and because we don't
think you will actually sue us".  The latter is just bad for the
community, whether it "works" or not.

best,
   john

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:23:32 -0700

On 9/19/2012 2:38 PM, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> Until there is a court decision impacting this usefulness (or one can
> be reasonably expected), the legal angle is simply irrelevant.
>
> (Just keeping the thread alive so it doesn't seem that everybody
> agrees with the strangely luddite position taken here.)

Thanks for pressing the point.

I'm trying to imagine anything useful coming from decision-making 
process that ignores utility.  Accidents do occur, of course, but do we 
want the utility of an effort to be an accidental outcome?

At the same time, the real-world imposes legal concerns whether we want 
them or not.  The challenge, here, is to balance realistic concerns 
against realistic costs.  It is as dangerous to pay too much attention 
to legal issues as it is too much.

However...

We are a public-interest organization, with open participation, 
automated issuing of I-Ds, and a policy of their permanent retention and 
availability.

I'd expect an exceptional action to remove content from the permanent 
archive to create substantial legal exposure in many jurisdictions. 
Unfair bias and censoring of speech are two catch-phrases that occur to 
my non-lawyer brain.  I can too-easily serious liabilities for a removal 
action deemed legally inappropriate.

Worrying about that exposure only after the fact does not strike me as 
prudent.

d/

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:28:13 +0200

> represent severely bad judgment.

It may be news for many people, but we all do things all day that might be considered illegal by someone.
(The image of a "law-abiding citizen" is mostly romantics.)
The question is whether there is an actual risk involved.
When there isn't, and people still press the point, we call that a red herring.

There is always a non-zero risk that some of our actions could by some jurisdiction maybe considered illegal.
Whether that likelihood (and the potential damage) is bearable or not, is indeed a matter of judgement.
Lawyers engage in assessing such a risk, and it is then usually a business (or personal life) decision whether you take the risk.

In this specific case, however, let me just opine that anybody who sees a serious risk here doesn't seem to get out much otherwise.

> Perhaps more important from my point of view, [...]

Now those are the interesting questions, indeed.
Let's focus on what is useful, and what is right (not what can be considered legal or illegal using some contrived amateur lawyer thinking).

The reality is that there is no harm coming to a submitter from the fact that the IETF is the 1001st place where expired drafts can be had.
There simply is no downside to the IETF also archiving them and making the archive available for our purposes.
The upside of doing this is that we maintain control, and that we can have tools operate on that archive that are useful to our work.
That is the right thing to do.

Now the one single thing that irks me, but I don't know how to solve: 
We just had a consensus call in one WG on adopting a draft that at this time had been expired for a year.
The chairs didn't notice, because the URI was stable (as it should be).

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:22:12 -0700

Hi Carsten,
>The chairs didn't notice, because the URI was stable (as it should be).

Send a message with a subject line of Resurrect I-D file to internet-drafts@.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 03:42:43 -0700

Hi John,
>community, whether it "works" or not.

In a past century there was a discussion about maintaining a public 
archive of expired I-Ds.  There is a striking difference in the 
arguments; there wasn't much discussion about the legal 
side.  Nowadays an individual has to hire a practicing lawyer from 
the state of Virginia before making any contribution.

It was also argued that the IETF would need a policy to decide on 
whether to turn I-Ds into an archival series.  IENs and RFCs where 
mentioned.  In those ancient times the question was also about 
distribution instead of publication.  It was also pointed out that it 
was better not to perpetuate bad ideas.  There wasn't any mention of 
the social contract.  At a guess it was probably because everything 
was not a matter of "rights" or legal issues.  Or it might be that 
social contracts were part of the obvious.

A sift of long disagreements might show that the sensible "opposing" 
argument is often missed because of the sugarcoating.  A dismissive 
attitude might also have something to do with that.

Consensus is when no man or woman is left standing on the battlefield.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:11:15 +0200

> Send a message with a subject line of Resurrect I-D file to internet-drafts@.

Interesting.
Actually, in this case I'd rather have the author resubmit, just to make sure not only the rest of the WG, but also the author continues to like the draft...
(But I'm not chair for this WG.)

(My problem was not that draft expiry makes the process more complicated, but that the chairs didn't notice the expiry and I can't blame them.)

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:55:15 -0700

Hi Carsten,
At 06:11 21-09-2012, Carsten Bormann wrote:
>Actually, in this case I'd rather have the author resubmit, just to 
>make sure not only the rest of the WG, but also the author continues 
>to like the draft...

It's better if the author resubmits the draft.

>(My problem was not that draft expiry makes the process more 
>complicated, but that the chairs didn't notice the expiry and I 
>can't blame them.)

Ah, that's a different problem.  There was a draft which went through 
WGLC without any further action for nearly a year.  The lifetime is a 
"tool" which can be used to gauge whether the author continues to 
like the draft or is still interested in working on it.  It is also a 
way for the author to gauge whether the IETF is still interested in 
working on the draft.

Regards,
-sm

P.S. If you say that the draft expiry makes the process more 
complicated, that's the view that primes and not what I want to believe.

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:28:40 -0400

I believe that the IETF has all of the necessary rights to reproduce, distribute, and display publicly all Internet-Drafts.  Here is my analysis:

In RFC 1310, March 1992, the IAB describes Internet-Drafts, but
it does not define the rights that contributors grant.  As best I can
determine, the very first I-D was posted shortly after this RFC
was published.

In RFC 1602, March 1994, the grant of rights becomes very
explicit:

   Contributor agrees to grant, and does grant to ISOC, a
   perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide right
   and license under any copyrights in the contribution to
   reproduce, distribute, perform or display publicly and
   prepare derivative works that are based on or incorporate
   all or part of the contribution, and to reproduce,
   distribute and perform or display publicly any such
   derivative works, in any form and in all languages, and to
   authorize others to do so.

In RFC 2026, BCP 9, October 1996, the explicit grant of rights
is published in a consensus BCP:

   Some works (e.g. works of the U.S. Government) are not subject to
   copyright.  However, to the extent that the submission is or may
   be subject to copyright, the contributor, the organization he
   represents (if any) and the owners of any proprietary rights in
   the contribution, grant an unlimited perpetual, non-exclusive,
   royalty-free, world-wide right and license to the ISOC and the
   IETF under any copyrights in the contribution.  This license
   includes the right to copy, publish and distribute the
   contribution in any way, and to prepare derivative works that are
   based on or incorporate all or part of the contribution, the
   license to such derivative works to be of the same scope as the
   license of the original contribution.

Internet-Drafts provide important historical records for the open and transparent operation of the IETF.  For this reason, removal of an I-D from the Public I-D Archive is a significant action.

If someone posted an I-D under RFC 1310, when the grant was not explicit, and they want to have their Internet-Draft removed from the Public I-D Archive, then they ought to request that action from the IESG.  However, RFC 1602 and RFC 2026 are quite clear about the grant.  The request for removal of an Internet-Draft posted after March 1994 needs to be associated with some legal action or some form of abuse.

Russ

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 13:54:37 -0700

Hi, Russ,

FWIW, you seem to be conveniently ignoring at least two issues:

1) all the IDs before March 1994
	which should not be published at all until
	permission is given (opt-in)

2) all the IDs published before boilerplate inclusion was required
	the IETF cannot merely assert its rights;
	authors need to consent (and if submission were consent
	then the IEEE, ACM, et al. wouldn't need the
	copyright transfer statements they regularly use)

Others have noted that click-based rights transfer may not be sufficient 
as well (the organizations above largely still use explicit signature 
agreements).

And, ultimately, this won't be determined by analysis, but by a court.

Joe

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:48:40 -0700

> And, ultimately, this won't be determined by analysis, but by a court.

These kinds of threats seem a bit over the top.

--Paul Hoffman

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:16:10 -0700

> These kinds of threats seem a bit over the top.

It was an observation, not a threat (at all).

No analysis of legal matters is ever decided until a court weighs in. 
Lawyers will say what they are willing to defend - pro and con - but 
their statements aren't fact. So even if they claim this is cut-and-dry, 
it isn't until case is decided.

Joe

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:38:04 -0400

Joe,

While I've somewhat sympathetic to your position -- I don't
think the IETF should be supporting a public archival collection
of expired I-Ds, especially older ones, either-- I think you are
getting a little over the top.  Specifically...

> 	permission is given (opt-in)

While I agree, I think that most of the reason for that has to
do with implicit or explicit IETF commitments to individuals
rather than legal constraints.  That is not to say the legal
constraints aren't there.  IANAL, much less a judge, and have no
opinion on that which anyone else should pay attention to.  

Suppose that, as a modified form of opt-out under the latest
proposed policy, you were to send a note to the IESG asking that
all of your old I-Ds be taken down from the public archive on
the grounds that having them public is abusive of commitments
you have good reason to believe were made to you.    If the IESG
said "nope, not abusive enough", you could then either appeal
(probably a more constructive way of airing things under our
rules than involving the legal process) or claim that the IETF
had no rights to keep a document posted to which you believe you
have retained copyright and get a DMCA take-down request issued.
Such a request would give the IESG and IETF Trust the
"opportunity" to consider how much risk they wanted to assume to
keep your documents posted and possibly to discuss that with the
community.  Sadly, they might consider the odds that you would
actually choose to sue in their risk assessment (see below).

That wouldn't let you made document availability decisions by
default for anyone else (e.g., by forcing opt-in), but would,
IMO, focus the discussion in a way that increasingly heated
comments on the IETF list would not.

> And, ultimately, this won't be determined by analysis, but by

Well, it would be determined by a court only if someone felt
strongly enough about a particular document or set of documents
to go to the expense of going down that path.  I am unhappy with
the current IPR regime, unhappy enough with current practices
that some things that would have been posted as I-Ds under the
policies as I understood them a decade or two ago just don't
make it into the system.  Perhaps that is A Good Thing, perhaps
not, but one of the inevitable consequences of an IPR policy
that gives the IETF more and more discretion over what to do
with ideas and "contributions" that aren't turned into standards
is that it will see fewer such contributions.  Only the
community can judge whether that is a good tradeoff -- a
judgment that is made more difficult by not being able to
ascertain what it isn't seeing.   But I'm not nearly unhappy
enough to try to drag the IETF into court over the issue,
partially because I know that doing so wouldn't cause the
documents to go away even if I won.

If no one feels mean-tempered enough to launch such a court
case, then the policy won't be settled by a judge, it will stand
because no one challenges it.

   john

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:27:44 -0700

> opinion on that which anyone else should pay attention to.

IMO, the IETF should not set an example of "post what you want, and take 
things down only on legal threat".

It's reasonable to post what the IETF has rights to. Posting things that 
the IETF *wants* but does *not* have explicit rights too seems a 
non-starter.

> actually choose to sue in their risk assessment (see below).

I expect that might be what transpires here, but if we're in an 
organization that does that I would seriously reconsider writing future 
contributions.

> comments on the IETF list would not.

Sure, having the IETF step on authors' rights certainly focuses the 
discussion. I sincerely hope this organization understands its 
responsibility to the community better, and respects the rights of 
others in its action (not merely the cost of legal entanglements).
> to go to the expense of going down that path.

Agreed; I'm only noting that this is all conjecture, not fact.

...
> because no one challenges it.

Perhaps. Perhaps those of us who feel the IETF is setting a bad example 
should just walk away. That solves the problem, right?

Joe