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Re: IPR Questions Raised by Sam Hartman at the IETF 73 Plenary

2008-12-12 10:11:26
Let's do keep in mind that the license permission for reuse in
IETF work has existed explicitly since RFC 2026 (1996) and
implicitly for a long time before that.   So, again for IETF
work, the notion of having to either contact a lot of people to
get permission or to completely rewrite is just not an issue, at
least for documents that have been originated or revised since
1996.

There is a gray area for "code" materials last published before
1996, but I suggest that they are few enough for the Trust to
deal with on a special-case basis.  That is, I assume, one of
the reasons the IPR WG gave the Trust some flexibility.

Given that, Marshall, your proposal essentially requires the
Trust (and potentially Counsel) to do considerable work on
behalf of hypothetical third parties who might want to make
non-IETF use of some IETF materials.  As someone who is getting
very sensitive to the rapidly rising costs of IETF registration
fees and other participation expenses, especially against the
background of deteriorating economies, I see no reason why I, or
any IETF participant who is not directly interested in the use
of those materials for non-IETF purposes, should pay for that
type of author-tracking-down and license-obtaining activity.   I
don't care how low that marginal cost is given volunteer time
from Trustees and pro bono work from Counsel; if it adds only
USD 10 to the meeting fees, it is far too much.   If someone
feels as need to reuse text that is not under the Trust's
control, let them incur the expense.

   john

p.s. I would not personally object to the Trust's imposing a
hefty copyright licensing fee on anyone who wanted to use
materials outside the IETF process, hefty enough to cover the
costs of what you have proposed and leave a significant safety
margin.  But that would clearly be inconsistent with the intent
of both the IPR WG generally and those who argued most strongly
for the Trust to have these rights in particular.


--On Friday, 12 December, 2008 08:51 -0500 Marshall Eubanks
<tme(_at_)multicasttech(_dot_)com> wrote:

...
One of my general principles is that engineers should not try
to be lawyers, and I am dubious about any attempt to make IETF
contributors obtain licenses from third parties.
...
This would shift any work to obtain earlier licenses onto the
Trust and the Trust Counsel, where in my opinion it belongs.
This would also serve the useful purpose of automatically
obtaining licenses from people who are just reusing their own
work (if they are in a position to grant such a license).

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