--On Wednesday, May 11, 2011 16:43 -0400 Steven Bellovin <smb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> It is a lot more time (and money) saving to search free >> versions before entering transactions to purchase them than >> to rely blindly on PubMed, IEEE, ACM, google scholar etc. > > Unfortunately, the IEEE has tightened its copyright policy; see > http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights > /paperversionpolicy.html for details. Steve, It seems to me that this policy applies to documents published by the IEEE and that it has no direct effect on IETF (or RFC Editor)-published documents. Interestingly, it is also very similar to a generally-understood historical version of the policy wrt RFCs at least before the IETF community started practicing "amateur lawyer": I-Ds and other prepublication documents basically belong to the authors and they can do with them as they like (the IETF Trust is now insisting on attaching copyright notices to I-Ds; let's not start another debate about the legitimacy of that practice). By contrast, RFCs involve some value-added by the RFC Editor, copyright assertions have been made for a decade or two, and "we" have tried to control derivative publications. The main difference is also familiar: the IETF wants to limit reproduction permission for published versions (presumably to continue to make money on them to offset other expenses) while we permit unlimited distribution and reproduction without special permission as long as the documents are intact or meet specific other criteria. A second difference is that we've never asked folks to go find online versions of I-Ds and update them to point explicitly to the successor RFCs. I have no idea how one actually does that or enforces it but, in principle, it is an idea we might actually find it beneficial to consider. Finally, the IEEE insists on formal copyright transfer at a well-defined point (and, as far as I know, always has). "We" don't think we need that. best, john _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf