[ih] Saving IETF history

[Steve Crocker]

Heh, heh.  Besides the prior art, it’s damn obvious.

Thanks,

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

> On May 12, 2021, at 5:54 PM, Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:
> 
> The actual patent claim was quite wordy, but the gist of it was
> "downloading new versions of system software".    The IMPs did this all
> of the time.  Of course, billions (?) of computers could arguaby have
> violated that subsequent patent over the 17 years that it was in effect.
> 
> Claim 12 of US Patent 5335277 for the legal aficionados out there.
> 
> /Jack
> 
> 
>> On 5/12/21 5:46 PM, Steve Crocker wrote:
>> What was the relevant functionality?
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>>> On May 12, 2021, at 5:44 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> In 2012-2013, I got involved as an Expert Witness in one of those huge
>>> patent lawsuits, which had by then been going through the legal process
>>> for about 30 years (!!).  One of the lessons learned was that although
>>> documentation is useful, the most valuable evidence is physical. 
>>> 
>>> In this case, I noticed (and amazingly remembered) that the ARPANET IMP
>>> program was a viable example of relevant "prior art", which is the holy
>>> grail in patent battles.   The ARPANET did what the patent covered, and
>>> did it well before the patent was filed.  But proving that such an idea
>>> was actually implemented and used almost 40 years earlier was the
>>> necessary task.
>>> 
>>> A huge effort ensued, driven by the lawyers and their clients, trying to
>>> find an old IMP and make it operable again, so that the "prior art"
>>> behavior could be demonstrated at trial before a jury.   No actual IMP
>>> was unearthed (at least one that could still operate), but an early-70s
>>> listing of the IMP software had survived in a basement.   After a lot
>>> more effort, that old software was brought back to life, running on an
>>> emulator of the old Honeywell 316 computer that was used as an IMP.
>>> 
>>> The particular behavior of the IMP that demonstrated the prior art was
>>> apparently never described in the documentation.   It only could be
>>> proven by looking at the code itself.  The old saying "The documentation
>>> is in the code" was exactly correct.
>>> 
>>> Bottom line - don't just think about documents, which can be
>>> insufficient to prove that something actually existed.   Software, and
>>> even hardware, is even better, at least for some patent fights.   It
>>> captures parts of history that never got into words.
>>> 
>>> For the curious, there's a good description of the "ARPANET
>>> Resurrection" here:
>>> 
>>> https://walden-family.com/impcode/imp-code.pdf
>>> 
>>> Look around page 33.   Also see https://walden-family.com/impcode/
>>> 
>>> /Jack Haverty
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On 5/12/21 4:22 PM, Toerless Eckert via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> To put Karls conerns into a maybe easier understood (but theoretical) example for those on the list that have not been involved in practical instances of the problem:
>>>> 
>>>> - printed public/user product documentation from 2000 gets thrown out 15 years later because
>>>> of "we need to get rid of all this old junk", maybe because of refurnishing offices.
>>>> - half a year later, a lawsuit with such a "bogus" patent that was filed in 2002 ensues.
>>>> - Obviously, the 2000 public/user product documentation would exactly show the patent
>>>> claim to be "bogus" because the public documentation from 2000 explains exactly the same
>>>> thing the patent filed in 2002 claimed to be novel.
>>>> - Online web page of the prior art product of course did not keep old version information reaching
>>>> that far back, and even if it would have, it would not have date information on it, but only
>>>> version numbers.
>>>> 
>>>> These type of things easily happen in multi-million dollar lawsuits over and over.
>>>> 
>>>> Going forwarding, IMHO, the best solution for e.g.: IETF documentation would be:
>>>> 
>>>> a) have all data such as all of datatracker and IETF mailing list archive in an easy mirrored access form,
>>>>  which i think we do not have, at least i have not found it, only for some subset of our data.
>>>> 
>>>> b) Have multiple, independent of each other mirrors around the world that would create
>>>>  signed/dated certificates for the hashes of each mirrored document - and keep old
>>>>  (versions of) documents and their signatures even when they would be deleted/changed on the origin site.
>>>> 
>>>>  Maybe those mirrors cost money, but IMHO worth it. especially for stuff like IETF whose overall
>>>>  volume on disk is laughable small. And this becam standard tooling, folks like CHM should be
>>>>  ideal places for such mirroring.
>>>> 
>>>> Without something equivalent to a/b i fear it is way too easy to create fake evidence for anything,
>>>> and the "evidence" may not hold up as well court as  the "good old printed evidence".
>>>> 
>>>> This "creation time" tracking in a more trustworthy fashion will of course not
>>>> work retroactively, which is why it would be even more important to understand the value of
>>>> doing this now, so someone starts doing it for the benefit of future bogus lawsuits for
>>>> stuff we start working on now. Especially given how paper already has disappeared as more
>>>> reliable evidence.
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers
>>>>   Toerless
>>>> 
>>>>> On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 03:12:43PM -0700, Karl Auerbach via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>> I have also been highly concerned about the tendency of modern tech history
>>>>> to erase its own records.
>>>>> 
>>>>> My concern may, however, be in a different direction.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I am concerned about the growth of specious patents.  There are a lot of
>>>>> patent trolls out there who buy-up weak patents that got past the relatively
>>>>> lax patent examiners in the US and elsewere, examiners who often have no
>>>>> notion of ideas in networking or computer systems, whether embodied in
>>>>> software or hardware.
>>>>> 
>>>>> By erasing our past we make it difficult to rebut these bad patents - we
>>>>> have discarded the evidence that the claims of those patents are neither
>>>>> novel nor non-obvious.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I think that over the last few years the IETF has done a spectacular job of
>>>>> organizing and tracking the RFC series.
>>>>> 
>>>>> However, we still have a tendency to forget the old when the newer, shinier
>>>>> thing comes along.
>>>>> 
>>>>> We should strive to make sure that our past is recorded.  And we ought to
>>>>> consider legal evidentiary requirements so that one who is challenging
>>>>> specious patents is not blocked by the complexities of the rules of
>>>>> evidence.
>>>>> 
>>>>>   --karl--
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 5/9/21 1:23 AM, John Gilmore via Internet-history wrote:
>>>>>> Dave Crocker wrote:
>>>>>>> Saving the RFCs is obvious.  What appears to be less obvious and, IMO,
>>>>>>> is just as important in historical terms, is /all/ of the IETF-related
>>>>>>> work materials.  Drafts.  Mailing list archives.  Session notes.
>>>>>>> Everything.
>>>>>> John Day wrote:
>>>>>>> Agreed. It should go somewhere. Same for all of the other standards
>>>>>>> groups, forums, consortia, etc.
>>>>>> Re the IETF, look in:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>  https://archive-it.org/collections/11034
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> A few years ago, I set up an Archive-It.org job to monitor the IETF's
>>>>>> web presence.  I was disturbed at the deliberate ephemerality of the
>>>>>> Internet-Draft ecosystem.  I had been looking back at a 10-year-old
>>>>>> effort to eliminate some ridiculous restrictions on the IPv4 address
>>>>>> space, and IETF had thrown away most of the relevant documents (though I
>>>>>> found copies elsewhere once I knew their names).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Archive-It is a service of the nonprofit Internet Archive (archive.org).
>>>>>> So, the Internet Archive's robots are now crawling (various parts of)
>>>>>> the IETF websites every week, month, and quarter, under my direction.
>>>>>> And saving the results forever, or as long as the Internet Archive and
>>>>>> the Wayback Machine exist.  Between 1998 and now it's pulled in about
>>>>>> 1.8 TB of documents, which are accessible and searchable either from the
>>>>>> above URL, or from the main Wayback Machine at web.archive.org.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The IETF websites aren't organized for archiving.  I frankly don't
>>>>>> understand their structure, so am probably missing some important
>>>>>> things, and overcollecting other things.  But at least I tried.
>>>>>> Suggestions are welcome.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Just be glad the IETF is copying-friendly.  Imagine trying to archive
>>>>>> the IEEE or OSI standards development process.  Then imagine big
>>>>>> copyright lawsuits from self-serving people who tied their income
>>>>>> stream to restricting who can access the standards and the
>>>>>> standardization process.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>   John
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> PS: Anyone or any institution can get an Archive-It account for roughly
>>>>>> $10K/year.  The service automates the collecting of *anything* you want
>>>>>> from the web for posterity.  (If you want them to, the Internet Archive
>>>>>> will also write copies of it on new hard drives and send them to you for
>>>>>> your own archival collection.)  About 800 institutions are customers today.
>>>>>> You can also get a low-support low-volume Archive-It Basic account for
>>>>>> $500/year.  Or get custom Digital Preservation services to improve the
>>>>>> likelihood that your own curated digital assets will survive into the
>>>>>> distant future.  See https://Archive-It.org .
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> PPS: The Internet Archive's long term survival is, of course, not
>>>>>> guaranteed.  In particular, it will go through a tough transition when
>>>>>> its founder eventually dies.  What is guaranteed is that they have built
>>>>>> a corpus of useful information: Millions of books, billions of web
>>>>>> pages, hundreds of thousands of concerts, decades of saved television
>>>>>> channels, etc.  They are absorbing a lot of archival microfilm, too,
>>>>>> including genealogical and census records, magazines, etc.  This corpus
>>>>>> will likely motivate people to preserve and replicate it into being
>>>>>> useful in the distant future.  They have tried to design the technical
>>>>>> storage to encourage that result.  Does anyone here know anybody who has
>>>>>> both the money and the motivation to make a complete and ongoing copy in
>>>>>> a separately administered, separately owned organization?  That would
>>>>>> significantly mitigate the long term risk of having all the replicated
>>>>>> copies of the corpus owned by a single US nonprofit.  It would probably
>>>>>> take a bare minimum staff of 10 people to run and manage such an
>>>>>> operation, with dozens of petabytes of rotating storage in multiple data
>>>>>> centers and a large collection of (mostly free) software keeping it all
>>>>>> organized and accessible.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> -- 
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>>>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>> -- 
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>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
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>