At 12:34 PM -0800 1/9/09, Lawrence Rosen wrote: >Ted Hardie asked me: >> Are you willing to personally indemnify the individuals who are later >> sued by those who don't hold this view or are you willing to pay for >> the appropriate insurance cover? > >Of course not. Are you (or your company) warning me that *you* might sue me >for infringement of anything you contributed to a joint industry standard >RFC? Nope. And turning up the rhetoric to "flame" neither advances the discussion nor makes your arguments any more valid. > >Under US law, a joint copyright owner doesn't have to ask anyone's >permission to change the rules. Sorry you don't like that. I don't have any opinion, like, or dislike on that, and, as I said, I'm not lawyer. The point made repeatedly, though, is that even if all of the current individual contributors agree that this is the case, they run the risk of litigation by those who do not when they use the current system. It asks the contributor to assert something; they either must do the work of being sure they can make that assertion or they must assume the risk of having made the assertion if they find themselves in disagreement with other contributors. We did not previously get these rights explicitly; we did get others. Whether we have the "new" rights now due to the characteristics of the work does not seem to be settled enough for the contributors to believe they can assume the risks. They see the enumerated list and worry someone will sue them for it. Their lawyers may be wrong and you right, but that doesn't get them to assume the risks. >Or are you >threatening to sue the IETF Trust if it changes the rules? Based on what >legal principle? No, I am threatening to go get a calming cup of white tea, to remind myself why I was so happy when the IPR working group shut down. And, once again, I would be far happier having these discussion with you, Larry, if you had *ever* contributed anything to the IETF that didn't amount to mailing list political rhetoric. Since you have no evident likelihood of putting forth a document revision any of our standards, it's pretty hard to believe your view of the risk is as personal as, say, John's. Ted Hardie _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf