Hi Jorge - > Take a look at Section 5.4 of RFC 1602, which redefined > the IETF's IP process originally set forth in RFC 1310: > > 5.4. Rights and Permissions > > In the course of standards work, ISOC receives contributions in > various forms and from many persons. To facilitate the wide > dissemination of these contributions, it is necessary to establish > specific understandings concerning any copyrights, patents, patent > applications, or other rights in the contribution. The procedures > set forth in this section apply to contributions submitted after 1 > April 1994. For Internet standards documents published before > this date (the RFC series has been published continuously since > April 1969), information on rights and permissions must be sought > directly from persons claiming rights therein. I hear you and I suppose a very, very risk averse position would hold to the letter of that document. However, John Levine put it very well when he said: > Since approximately my entire income depends on copyright law (I write > books), I have looked at Title 17 and its interpretation pretty > closely. I have to conclude that given the facts surrounding the > early RFCs: pre-1976, no copyright notice, many written on government > contract, and a history of widespread copying and reuse without > explicit permission, it'd be extremely hard to make a case that there > were any limits on their use. > I think this is what you folks in the legal profession call a "business decision." There is a risk to any sort of action. As you know, being right doesn't mean you won't get sued. But, I'm with John on this one. RFCs are for all practical purposes in the public domain and it would be a very gutsy RFC author that went to court and tried to show that they had systematically defended their copyright over the last X years and were thus entitled to assert copyright this year. Carl _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf