Re: FW: MIB copyright statement

On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, C. M. Heard wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Scott Bradner wrote:
> > if the IETF is republishing the material it must have a
> > non-exclusive grant of copyright to do so so the ISOC copyright
> > is correct - if the IEEE is not granting that non-exclusive
> > right then the RFC can not be published
> 
> Well, it's not obvious that a grant of copyright, as opposed to
> permission to use the material, is required for republication.
> 
> But even if ISOC does get a non-exclusive grant of copyright, the
> point still stands that the standard abbreviated MIB copyright
> notice would be misleading since it mentions ISOC only, and not
> the IEEE, which in this case is the principal copyright holder.

Another point to be noted is that extraction of a MIB module from
an RFC (or an Internet-Draft) amounts to creation of a derivative
work.  The IEEE can grant permission for the IETF to republish the
MIB module in an informational RFC without necessarily granting
permission for the MIB module to be extracted;  that permission
needs to be granted separately.  Here is an extract from Section
5.2 (entitled "Derivative Works Limitation") of
draft-ietf-ipr-submission-rights-06.txt:

   If the Contributor desires to eliminate the IETF's right to make
   modifications and derivative works of an Contribution (other than
   translations), one of the two the following notices may be included
   in the Status of memo section of an Internet-Draft and included in a
   published RFC:

   a. "This document may not be modified, and derivative works of it may
      not be created, except to publish it as a RFC and to translate it
      into languages other than English."

   b. "This document may not be modified, and derivative works of it may
      not be created."

   In the cases of MIB or PIB modules and in other cases where the
   Contribution includes material that is meant to be extracted in order
   to be used, the following should be appended to statement 5.2 (a) or
   5.2 (b):

      "other than to extract section XX as-is for separate use."

   Notice 5.2(a) is used if the Contributor intends for the Contribution
   to be published as a RFC.  Notice 5.2(b) is used along with the
   Publication Limitation in Section 5.3 when the Contributor does not
   intend for the Contribution to be published as a RFC.

Again, it seems to me that the IEEE (as owner of the rights to the
MIB module) should be able to determine (a) whether it wants to
allow extraction of the MIB module and if so (b) what copyright
notice and restrictions on use apply.  That's not actually what
draft-ietf-ipr-submission-rights-06.txt says, though.  Since that
document is now in Last Call, I shall comment asking to ask that
this apparent omission be rectified.

//cmh