RE: [rights] Re: [rights-requirements] Comments on Requirementsversion 16

["Reddy, Hari" <Hari.Reddy@CONTENTGUARD.COM>]

Hello Karl:
I appreciate your concerns and comments but for the record, Anne Anderson has made it clear to the TC members both in writing and in meetings that the comments that she expresses are from Sun.

Also people are not taking exception to the difference of opinions. In fact the RLTC has been working diligently for the past few months to try to bring together different opinions, resulting in a Requirements Document that we have today. The Requirements SC, which Anne Anderson is a member, repeatedly requested the membership for input and feedback. The Requirements SC decided to do a Final Call for Comments since there were no more comments being made in the Requirements SC meetings. While members were expecting constructive responses such as those from the Samuelson Law Clinic that built upon our collective work, they were not expecting the unconstructive comments we received from Anne Anderson essentially requesting that the Requirements SC redo the work of the past few months. To wait until the final call to demand such a drastic change is bewildering and inconsiderate of the fellow RLTC members who have been working very hard together.

While I will not speculate on the motivation behind these actions, I can say as Chair it seriously undermines the progress of the TC and is personally frustrating.

Regards,
Hari

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl F. Best [mailto:karl.best@oasis-open.org]
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 4:46 PM
To: Gandee, Brad
Cc: Anne.Anderson@Sun.com; RLTC;
rights-requirements@lists.oasis-open.org; Patrick. Gannon (E-mail);
simon.nicholson@oasis-open.org
Subject: [rights] Re: [rights-requirements] Comments on Requirements
version 16


All:

May I remind you, first, that membership in OASIS TCs is by individual 
and not by company. So statements such as "Sun said..." or "Sun did..." 
are incorrect. Anne is the TC member and was the person who made the 
statements. The question of whether her statements reflect the opinion 
of her employer can likewise be applied to all the members of this TC.

Second, may I request that we try to practice a bit more civility. I 
understand that some people may take exception to things that other 
people say. But please, let's not devolve into the personal attacks that 
we had last fall; we've gotten awfully close to it the last couple of 
days. Simply checking with Anne to see if her concerns are or aren't 
adressed by the requirements document would be much better than starting 
another fist fight.

-Karl





Gandee, Brad wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> Somehow we have reacted to some key words and phrases and diverged into another discussion (which I have purposefully chosen not to include in this thread because it is divergent)that we have been over - that of legal rights.  In the process we strayed from the point of my email and into what now seems like a pattern.  'Latch onto hot button issues revolving around legal rights and argue.'  One of the reasons I wrote the email was because I thought we were making some modicum of progress.  The exchange between Deirdre, Aaron and Brian and the wider group was working towards a path to finalizing the Requirements document.  We had added text to the introduction that was intended to eliminate the kind of exchange Dmitry and Cory just shared, and I quote from the Introduction below:
> 
> "As such, the technical work of the RLTC is NOT (my emphasis) directed to:
> -Develop specific terms that will be used to write expressions that are pertinent to some domain such as:
> 	Specific usage permissions and conditions specifically for content and
> 	Specific usage permissions and conditions specifically for other types of resources.
> -Develop a language or system that addresses legal rights and processes. Examples of these rights include, but are not limited to, those legal rights termed as "fair use rights" and contractual rights.
> -Develop expressions of specific policies (such as "every e-book can be copied once" or "any doctor may review his patients' records")."
> 
> We all agreed to the addition of this text.  
> 
> My email was aimed at addressing the sudden outburst in the form of comments from Sun which hypocritically called blocking any specification from this TC because of the RAND IP declaration when the spec that she has worked on in XACML carries the same declaration.  She also chose to wait for three months to object to the language, part of which I quoted above and it was thought agreeable to everyone including Anne who was on the Requirements call October 16th and again October 30th after Version 14 was posted for everyone's comments.  She attended those meetings and never objected.  My question is: Why is Sun bringing this issue up again, now? It would seem to be solely an obstructionist tactic.
> 
> I thought we were making progress.  We had engaged in a discussion that was focused on insuring that whatever specification this TC produced, if we ever are allowed to get to that point, would contain the building blocks with which users could construct licenses (that is licenses in the XrML sense) to address a broad range authorization and legal rights related use cases including and not excluding Fair Use. 
> 
> Brad
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gandee, Brad 
> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 12:00 PM
> To: Anne.Anderson@Sun.com; RLTC;
> rights-requirements@lists.oasis-open.org
> Cc: Patrick. Gannon (E-mail); Karl F. Best (E-mail);
> simon.nicholson@oasis-open.org
> Subject: RE: [rights-requirements] Comments on Requirements version 16
> 
> 
> All,
> 
> I would like to address some of the comments that Anne Anderson submitted on January 15th.
>   
> Before making specific comments I must say that I am disappointed and discouraged by the fact that she has raised many points that have already been discussed at length and dispositioned by the RLTC. When her comments are taken as a whole they raise fundamental questions about Anne and Sun's motivation in participating in the RLTC and the likelihood of the RLTC being able to ever function effectively.
> 
> Anne said: "As a key Internet standard in various architectural models, the output of the RLTC MUST be comprehensive enough to ensure that the various applications of the standard will not interfere with or subvert legal rights such as "fair use rights". 
>  
> BG:  It is not the job of the rights language standard to "ensure that the various applications of the standard will not interfere with or subvert legal rights such as "fair use rights"".  It is the job of the subject applications to not interfere or subvert any legal rights due to a user of that application.  Is it the job of the IETF to create standards for Internet communication that block Hate Speech, or block the transfer of proprietary information, or block communication by terrorists conspiring to kill?  Is it the job of the JAVA authors to prevent the use of JAVA in presenting or displaying pornography to children?
> 
> Equally important has Sun made these same protestations in other standards efforts.  For example, at the Open Mobile Alliance, where Sun is a Sponsor Member, the highest level of membership, concerning the OMA Digital Rights Expression Language?  
> 
> For that matter has Sun made these same protestations to the Access Control TC about the same potential abusive use of the XACML spec to subvert Fair Use rights?  XACML has been presented recently at a meeting of PRISM as usable in DRM, and yet I see no built-in architectural features to make sure that any user of XACML will be prevented from 'interfering with or subverting legal rights such as fair use'.  And if it does not provide those features, did Sun vote NO in the current vote on its approval as an OASIS specification?
> 
> If the answer is NO to any of these questions I have to wonder why these protestations are being made only to the RLTC?  It would appear that Sun is selectively raising these issues to slow or block the work of the RLTC.
> 
> Anne said: 3. The proposed language can probably not be implemented, at least in its targeted domains, in a way that does not infringe upon intellectual property claims. 
> 
> BG:  Is this the opinion of Sun to the RLTC (and OASIS members) or just a convenient characterization for sake of your opposition to the work of the RLTC?
> 
> 
> Anne said in 3:  The owners of that intellectual property have offered only RAND terms for licenses to that intellectual property.  
> 
> Approval of a standard that requires payment of license fees for IP effectively grants a monopoly to the owner of that IP, while providing no protection to the community against mis-use of that monopoly.
> 
> "RAND" has no legal meaning.  It offers no protection to the community against the imposition of prohibitive license fees.  RAND has been used in the past to extract increasingly more onerous fees as the associated standard has become more widely adopted.  
> 
> BG: Again this argument is premised on a continued mischaracterization.  The specification will be freely available without license fees.  Implementers of the specification will only require license coverage for the ContentGuard patents if the systems they build infringe. 
> 
> Anne's statement also does not make much sense when she discusses the "increasingly more onerous fees" exacted "as the associated standard has become more widely adopted". From a business and historical perspective this argument does not hold water. If fees were truly excessive then the standard would not become more widely adopted.  Something that is constantly overlooked in this oft repeated argument is that standards are NOT mandatory.  Companies CHOOSE to implement standards because they are of use in their businesses.  No one is obligated, and that includes Sun, to implement this standard.  Likewise if the DRM providers working with content owners implementing this standard do not respect the "rights" of the consumers, they will probably find very low uptake for their service and products.    
> 
> The whole point of having a standard rights expression language is to describe the uses (both granted and "Fair") one would like to enable for the Users.  I and others have stated since the beginning of the RLTC that we expect and encourage users, organizations like the Samuelson Law Clinic and EFF, implementers and others to construct licenses using the RLTC specification combined with extensions to that specification to describe Fair Use rights.  Since there is not a single global definition for many of the rights Anne refers to, there will be many different versions of these for the many different situations.  The creators of these extensions and licenses will promote their use.  A good example would be the TRUSTe Privacy Seal Program https://www.truste.org/ivalidate.php?url=www.yahoo.com or the classic Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. 
> 
> 
> 
> Anne said:  The argument has been made that the developers of a standard can never know who holds IP claims that might be asserted.  That is true.  But where clear IP claims *are* known, and where RF licenses to that IP are not offered, any standard that a large proportion of the Internet community will be forced to implement and utilize must be designed around those known IP claims.  If it is not possible to design the standard around such known IP claims, then the standard should not be approved.
> 
> BG:  No one is "forced to implement" this standard.  Do you expect that people will be "forced" to implement SAML or XACML? I have seen no evidence that IBM provided terms and guidance on how to work around their patents and has the Access Control TC incorporated those work-arounds?  Additionally if the XACML TC has in fact built in those work-arounds then the IP claims would no longer apply.  If that is not the case, again I am assuming that Sun will be voting NO on the approval of XACML as an OASIS specification.
> 
> Based on Anne's characterization of any spec with IP claims accompanied by an offer of RAND terms as unacceptable and "should not be approved" I would also expect that Sun would be voting NO on ANY specification with IP claims and an offer of RAND terms that is presented to the general membership. I assume this will be the case with XACML. Has Sun made such a public statement or does this only apply to the RLTC?
> 
> But more importantly I am most troubled by the following question: Why did Sun join the RLTC?  ContentGuard made an IP declaration at the very first meeting when we submitted XrML and it was accepted by the RLTC before Anne or anyone else from Sun joined the TC.  Was the purpose to block ANY progress or prevent an affirmative vote in the RLTC?
> 
> We have covered the points raised here many times already, yet Anne continues to object. Anne raises these points here but not in other places where I at least believe they apply equally.  Taken in their entirety, these positions by Sun make it abundantly clear that Sun fundamentally disagrees with the Charter of this TC. Furthermore that we are far apart in our thinking and that the RLTC is very unlikely to reach consensus. I can only conclude that the RLTC is not going to produce a specification or a standard, and is wasting the valuable time of a lot of good technical people. Furthermore based on all of Anne's stated objections I would think that it is appropriate for Sun to reconsider their membership in the RLTC.
> 
> 
> Brad Gandee
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anne Anderson [mailto:Anne.Anderson@Sun.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:57 AM
> To: RLTC; rights-requirements@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: [rights-requirements] Comments on Requirements version 16
> 
> 
> Comments on RLTC Requirements Version 16, last modified 11/26/2002
> Comments from: Anne Anderson
> Comments date: 15 January 2003
> 
> These are all comments I have made in meetings, and that others
> have made, but I will reiterate them here.
> 
> 1. "Thus, in this document we use the words equivalent to the
>    marketplace concept of rights: permissions granted by one
>    entity to another."
> 
>    This is NOT the "marketplace concept of rights".  A "right" is
>    something that I have intrinsically, not something that
>    someone grants to me.  For example, the "right to life,
>    liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".  The Bill of Rights is
>    a recognition of certain rights, not a granting of rights.
> 
>    From the American Heritage Dictionary, the definitions that
>    are most applicable (as a noun): "1. That which is just,
>    morally good, legal, proper, or fitting.  5. Something that is
>    due to a person by law, tradition, or nature.  6. A just or
>    legal claim or title."
> 
> 2. 'the technical work of the RLTC is *not* directed
>    to... Develop a language or system that addresses legal rights
>    and processes.  Examples of these rights include, but are not
>    limited to, those legal rights termed as "fair use rights" and
>    contractual rights.'
> 
>    As a key Internet standard in various architectural models,
>    the output of the RLTC MUST be comprehensive enough to ensure
>    that the various applications of the standard will not
>    interfere with or subvert legal rights such as "fair use
>    rights".
> 
>    If the key standard in this area does not address these
>    issues, then consumers will be forced to participate in, argue
>    with, or litigate against every extension to this core
>    standard that makes it useful in real applications.  Consumers
>    collectively are a large group, but their direct benefit from
>    working on any particular standard is small.  Entities with no
>    interest in consumer rights, but who can benefit from
>    restricting consumer rights are a small group, and their
>    direct benefit from working on any particular standard is very
>    large.
> 
>    The argument has been made that the developers of the "rights"
>    language are not able to know all the legal rights that users
>    may have in various domains.  This is not a reason for failing
>    to address protection of these rights.  Protection could be
>    provided in various ways.  Just to give one example, the RLTC
>    could specify a template for a required extension that MUST be
>    tailored to and included in any conforming application.  The
>    template could spell out examples of rights that must be
>    protected, and specify that any of these that apply must be
>    included and that any additional rights pertinent to the
>    application domain must also be added.  The RLTC membership
>    includes an incredible legal resources for contributing to any
>    possible solution to this problem.
> 
>    The argument has been made that no rights language can
>    technically protect traditional legal rights such as fair use.
>    If this is true, then no rights language should be used, and
>    particularly should not be standardized.  Just because the
>    technical means exist for one party to protect its rights in
>    such a way that another party's rights are violated does not
>    mean that those technical means should be used.
> 
>    Standardization confers the support of all approving parties
>    upon the language, protocol, etc. that is being standardized.
>    When the language, protocol, etc. benefits only a small
>    community and harms a large community, then the benefits of
>    standardization should not be granted.
> 
> 3. The proposed language can probably not be implemented, at
>    least in its targetted domains, in a way that does not
>    infringe upon intellectual property claims.  The owners of
>    that intellectual property have offered only RAND terms for
>    licenses to that intellectual property.
> 
>    Approval of a standard that requires payment of license fees
>    for IP effectively grants a monopoly to the owner of that IP,
>    while providing no protection to the community against mis-use
>    of that monopoly.
> 
>    "RAND" has no legal meaning.  It offers no protection to the
>    community against the imposition of prohibitive license fees.
>    RAND has been used in the past to extract increasingly more
>    onerous fees as the associated standard has become more widely
>    adopted.
> 
>    Any key Internet standard must be freely implementable.
>    Interoperability requires that all parties that wish to
>    participate in the Internet must implement key standards.  Any
>    key Internet standard that requires payment of unspecified
>    license fees will be a detriment to the development and use of
>    the Internet.
> 
>    The argument has been made that the developers of a standard
>    can never know who holds IP claims that might be asserted.
>    That is true.  But where clear IP claims *are* known, and
>    where RF licenses to that IP are not offered, any standard
>    that a large proportion of the Internet community will be
>    forced to implement and utilize must be designed around those
>    known IP claims.  If it is not possible to design the standard
>    around such known IP claims, then the standard should not be
>    approved.
> 


-- 
=================================================================
Karl F. Best
Vice President, OASIS
+1 978.667.5115 x206
karl.best@oasis-open.org  http://www.oasis-open.org


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