At 12:34 PM -0800 1/9/09, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
Ted Hardie asked me:
Are you willing to personally indemnify the individuals who are later
sued by those who don't hold this view or are you willing to pay for
the appropriate insurance cover?
Of course not. Are you (or your company) warning me that *you* might sue me
for infringement of anything you contributed to a joint industry standard
RFC?
Nope. And turning up the rhetoric to "flame" neither advances the discussion
nor makes your arguments any more valid.
Under US law, a joint copyright owner doesn't have to ask anyone's
permission to change the rules. Sorry you don't like that.
I don't have any opinion, like, or dislike on that, and, as I said, I'm not
lawyer.
The point made repeatedly, though, is that even if all of the current individual
contributors agree that this is the case, they run the risk of litigation by
those who do not when they use the current system. It asks the contributor
to assert something; they either must do the work of being sure they can
make that assertion or they must assume the risk of having made the assertion
if they find themselves in disagreement with other contributors.
We did not previously get these rights explicitly; we did get others.
Whether we have the "new" rights now due to the characteristics
of the work does not seem to be settled enough for the contributors
to believe they can assume the risks. They see the enumerated
list and worry someone will sue them for it. Their lawyers may be
wrong and you right, but that doesn't get them to assume the risks.
Or are you
threatening to sue the IETF Trust if it changes the rules? Based on what
legal principle?
No, I am threatening to go get a calming cup of white tea, to remind myself
why I was so happy when the IPR working group shut down.
And, once again, I would be far happier having these discussion with
you, Larry, if you had *ever* contributed anything to the IETF that didn't
amount to mailing list political rhetoric. Since you have no evident
likelihood
of putting forth a document revision any of our standards, it's pretty
hard to believe your view of the risk is as personal as, say, John's.
Ted Hardie
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