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

2000-10-01 13:40:03
On Sun, Oct 01, 2000 at 11:30:00AM -0700, Bob Braden wrote:
[...]
  *> PS - i let the draft in question expire because i wanted to.
  *> that's the nice thing about expiry - the author retains a tiny
  *> modicum of control over something.  the notion that people
  *> other than the author can usurp control and publish it anyway
  *> is repugnant and is plagarism, pure and simple, no matter
  *> whether the author gets listed or not.  you didn't have permission,
  *> it's plagarism, if not theft.
  *> 
  *> 
Agreed.

It clearly is *not* plagerism -- the author is correctly identified. 
Whether it is theft or not depends on the meaning of the term "expires",
and I submit that the definition is simply not clear.  Consider the 
following case:

The drafts were put out for six months in public view, and explicitly or
implicitly, the intent was that those drafts could be copied at will and
studied at will, and that copying and studying was certainly not limited
to six months, because a draft or portions of it could at any time be
emailed or otherwise copied and be used.  The IETF obviously had no
control over who could copy that work, and moreover the author
*certainly* knew that the IETF had no control over who could copy it. 
That is, the author of the draft made it available with the clear
knowledge that it could be copied freely.  Under those circumstances the
author would have a hard time trying to claim that everyone who made a
copy of that draft for their own purposes during that time must now go
and destroy them, and that would include the IETF itself.  Just because
something is removed from the drafts directory after 6 months (which is
what "expires" means) doesn't mean it gets erased everywhere else, and
everyone knows it, including the authors.

I suppose that if the draft contained language that claimed stronger
rights, and the IETF accepted it, then the IETF would be bound by 
whatever language was in the particular draft in question, and those 
authors might be able to make some claim against the IETF.  But in the 
default case no such claim would be possible.

I'm sure it would be an interesting legal case...

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent(_at_)songbird(_dot_)com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain



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