Lawrence Rosen wrote:
That's the problem around here. People worry to death about IP claims that
nobody is willing to actually make. People develop IP policies that solve
nonexistent problems (such as the "code" vs. "text" debate) and, by doing
so, add further confusion, evidenced by this current problem.
This should not be surprising. The vast majority of us are not lawyers,
and therefore we don't have the kind of wisdom that a lawyer has - in
particular the kind of wisdom that tells an experienced lawyer which
kinds of threats are actually worth worrying about, and more
importantly, which ones are not.
To most of us, the law - especially intellectual property law - is a
threat that we don't understand. But we've seen it do considerable harm
to our profession, and many of us have been personally burned by it. So
we can't afford to ignore the problem.
And while we also have some difficulty knowing how much to trust IETF's
counsel on these matters, few of us are willing/able to pay for our own
legal advice in these matters. Even if we did, it's not clear that we'd
get consistent answers from our individual lawyers. So in order to get
rough consensus among ourselves, we'd still be trying to protect
ourselves against threats that many would feel were nonexistent.
I'm not sure what to do about any of this.
Keith
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