[rfc-i] RFC citations committee I-D issued

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 2011-02-12 16:23, Joe Touch wrote:

> And perhaps those who do have a limited understanding of copyright law.

We all do, and afaik the IETF Trust's counsel is not on this
list to set us right.

> From those I've talked to, the copyright reverts to the author after the
> 6 month period. 

That cannot be true, since the IETF (whose conditions apply to all I-Ds)
does not require and has never required copyright transfer.

> At that point, those who use those copies for other than
> personal use are in violation of copyright law.

Even this amateur lawyer knows that is wrong. All versions of
the IETF copyright provisions have effectively given the IETF
a perpetual license to use the content of contributions, including
I-Ds, although the exact conditions have been adjusted from time
to time. Use outside the IETF is a different matter, but citation
is always allowed.

On 2011-02-12 18:25, Joe Touch wrote:

> You need to consider that not all I-Ds used the current boilerplate. Unless we differentiate which I-D citations are possible by that boilerplate, we can't make such incorrect assertions about all I-Ds. 

Sure, the exact conditions depend on which rules applied at the
time a specific draft version was submitted, and drafts submitted
before RFC 1602 may well turn out to be subject to common law.

   Brian