In Germany, the legal term is "Ersch�pfungsgrundsatz", in the US,
a vaguely similar legal concept seems to exist under the name
"first sale doctrine".
Having spent way too much time dealing with US copyright law (see,
for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_v._Google ) I can
say with great confidence that the first sale doctrine is completely
irrelevant here.
Bill could certainly send DMCA takedown notices for drafts for which
he has not assigned the copyright, and whoever was hosting the drafts
would have to respond, perhaps by taking them down, perhaps not.
I also happen to think that there is a very strong chance that a court
would find a non-commercial archive of historic IETF documents to be
protected by fair use. And I know that for documents that have not
had their copyright registered with the US Copyright office, the most
one could recover were one to win such a suit is actual damages which
in this case would be zero, so he'd have to pay the full cost of a
lawsuit in Federal court, out of pocket. Draw your own conclusions.
R's,
John