John C Klensin wrote:
Free quotation is internationally permitted by Berne convention:
So, to gain insight into the status of a document written by an author living and working in the US, and published by a US institution that was doing its work under contracts that flowed from the US governmnet, we are citing a treaty which the US did not ratify/join until 1988 in support of what can be done with a document published in 1980,
Surely, the permission of the treaty on free quoting is applicable for publication in US today, even though quoted text was written before the treaty was ratified by US, though, anyway, in US,fair use has been applicable.
a document whose copyright has almost certainly expired?
What? Copyright with a natural person author expires at least 50 (75 in so many countries) years after death of the author.
Colleagues, can an we please stop the amateur lawyering?
As a person who is paid partially because teaching copyright for students, I fully agree with you. However, a problem of most professional lawyers in some country is that they do not have much knowledge on copyright act in other countries. But, they should have some, though often amateur level, knowledge on Berne convention.
It is not, at least IMO, helpful, nor does it address the question that, AFAICT, John Levine was asking when the thread started.
That some other SDO which originally asked the question is full of amateur on legal issues is, IMHO, not a problem of IETF. Masataka Ohta
