Re: IETF legal boilerplate

Russ Allbery skrev:
> Harald Alvestrand <[email protected]> writes:
>
>   
>> Looks fine to me; I think the same is said or implied elsewhere
>> (including in USEFOR), but repetition isn't very harmful, and might be
>> helpful.
>>     
>
> Thanks, it's in -13.
>
> BTW, there's some current dust-up about the legal boilerplate in RFCs and
> some debate over whether it implies that the I-D author has to verify the
> legal status of all submissions to the I-D.  To be perfectly clear in a
> public forum, I have *not* done this.  I posted -13 on the basis of the
> following sentence in RFC 5378:
>
>    This memo does not retroactively obtain additional rights from
>    Contributions that predate the date that the IETF Trust announces the
>    adoption of these procedures.
>
> and therefore made no attempt to check the rights status of any
> submissions that went into this draft prior to when I became aware of
> these rules (which was a couple of days ago).
>   
Sigh.... as chair of the IPR WG, I'm at least in part responsible for 
this :-( - and yes, it's a mess.

In this case, my understanding of copyright law would say that if 
Charles or Henry Spencer were to object to submission under RFC 5378, 
they would have standing to do so; the requirement from RFC 5378 that 
they have "materially and substantially" contributed would leave most of 
the rest of us without a copyright to assert.
> RFC 5378 is a long, ugly legal document that I have no particular desire
> to read, understand, or analyze.
all I can say in its defense is that it's 2 pages shorter than 3978, its 
predecessor :-(
>   I'm hoping that the IETF will clearly
> resolve the current question, which appears to revolve around this text:
>
>    To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is protected
>    by copyright or other rights of authorship, the Contributor and each
>    named co-Contributor grant a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive,
>    royalty-free, world-wide, sublicensable right and license to the IETF
>    Trust under all such copyrights and other rights in the Contribution:
>
>    a. to copy, publish, display, and distribute the Contribution, in
>       whole or in part,
>
>    b. to prepare translations of the Contribution into languages other
>       than English, in whole or in part, and to copy, publish, display,
>       and distribute such translations or portions thereof,
>
>    c. to modify or prepare derivative works (in addition to
>       translations) that are based on or incorporate all or part of the
>       Contribution, and to copy, publish, display, and distribute such
>       derivative works, or portions thereof unless explicitly disallowed
>       in the notices contained in a Contribution (in the form specified
>       by the Legend Instructions), and
>
>    d. to reproduce any trademarks, service marks, or trade names which
>       are included in the Contribution solely in connection with the
>       reproduction, distribution, or publication of the Contribution and
>       derivative works thereof as permitted by this Section 5.3,
>       provided that when reproducing Contributions, trademark and
>       service mark identifiers used in the Contribution, including TM
>       and (R), will be preserved.
>
> and:
>
>    Subject to each Contributor's (or its sponsor's) ownership of its
>    underlying Contributions as described in Section 5.6 (which ownership
>    is qualified by the irrevocable licenses granted under Section 5.3),
>    each Contributor hereby acknowledges that the copyright in any RFC in
>    which such Contribution is included, other than an RFC that is an RFC
>    Editor Contribution, shall be owned by the IETF Trust.  Such
>    Contributor shall be deemed to assign to the IETF Trust such
>    Contributor's copyright interest in the collective work constituting
>    such RFC upon the submission of such RFC for publication, and
>    acknowledges that a copyright notice acknowledging the IETF Trust's
>    ownership of the copyright in such RFC will be included in the
>    published RFC.
>
> I have no problem granting the IETF Trust such a license and copyright
> assignment for the collective copyright for all of my contributions to
> this I-D.  However, I want to make very explicitly clear that I can speak
> only for my own contributions, I have not verified the contributions of
> anyone else involved in this draft (named or otherwise), and have no
> intention of doing so.
>
> If it becomes the job of the I-D Author to verify such legal details
> regarding the draft, I will be resigning as document author for this
> working group, as I have neither the time nor the inclination to be a
> legal bookkeeper.
>   
Understood. Since the only person left to do the bookkeeping is the WG 
chair, I guess it's my job.
> Furthermore, please note that while I have no difficulty doing this, I
> have not signed any legal document transferring copyright, and as a matter
> of law, I do not believe that the IETF is legally permitted to transfer
> copyright in a manner such as that described above without such a legal
> document.  So as a matter of law, I believe section 5.9 is, in fact, void.
> I am, however, not a lawyer and am not taking action on that basis.
>   
It's not a copyright transfer - it's a license, and a statement that you 
won't object to the IETF Trust asserting copyright in the resulting RFC.

That's the only way it can work according to copyright law without 
requiring real signed copyright transfer documents, according to the 
lawyer. And the WG was very much vehemently opposed to requiring such 
copyright transfer documents.
> Other contributors can and should speak for themselves regarding the
> implications of the above (and the rest of RFC 5378) for their work.  I
> very explicitly refuse to make any representations on behalf of anyone
> else, and if it is made clear to me that by submitting an I-D I am doing
> so, I will immediately cease to submit any further I-Ds to the IETF until
> such time as that changes.
>   
well, 3978 wasn't much better in that regard. The reason it worked was 
the assumption (without basis in law, as it turns out - the construction 
of the permissions was unsound, but the shared belief that we could is 
probably good enough that a challenge wouldn't pass muster) that we had 
permission to copy from all contributions, including emails and old I-Ds.

The particular problem here is whether material submitted under 3978 can 
be incorporated into material submitted under 5378 without asking the 
authors.

The Trust is working on finding a reasonable solution.

                    Harald