Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-24-01 at 09:15 -0500, James Grimmelmann
wrote:
>
>>> But as of
>>> late, he decided to put a license on the
specification document, which
>>> is to be submited to the IETF as an RFC.
>>>
>>> The license he chose was CC-BY-ND,
>
>> Net takeaway: ND is ineffectual here. It might
help prevent some drift
>> in the official standards document, but as long as
that's available
>> someplace canonical, there's no serious worry that
the
>> description-of-what-is would drift anyway. Given
that, CC-BY seems like
>> a perfectly reasonable license for the
description.
>
> I'd have to disagree. The IETF has its own
idiosyncratic copyright rules
> for RFCs and other contributions. It's worth reviewing
RFC 3978, which I
> think is the latest update to these rules:
>
> http://www.ietf.o
rg/rfc/rfc3978.txt
These rules are not quite on point. They relate to the
rights that
contributors and editors grand to the IETF itself to copy
and modify
submissions in the process of producing and distributing
standards. The
IETF allows contributors to state limitations (sec. 5.2),
but the IETF
doesn't attempt to enforce its own limitations through this
RFC.
> The usual deal with RFCs is that they may be copied
verbatim by the
> public in any medium, for commercial or non-commercial
use. Derivative
> works may also be published as part of the RFC
framework. This is pretty
> close to the by-nd license terms, at least in spirit,
but there are some
> twists and turns that may be incompatible with by-nd.
My point was that many of the ND restrictions are
unenforceable under
U.S. copyright law, and the same applies to this statement
of IETF RFC
policies. Certainly the positive grants can be relied on
(anyone can
make verbatim copies), but my take is also that many
non-verbatim copies
are legal.
> In other words, if you're going the RFC route, it's
probably best to not
> screw around with CC licenses and just stick with the
IETF's rules.
This strikes me as sensible; if you're going to the IETF,
follow IETF
rules. Just don't expect those rules to suffice to prevent
forking and
incompatibility.
James
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