Should standards be copyirghted?

Contrary to the article's suggestion, retaining copyright does "prevent bastardization of the standard by someone else who tries to publish a different version of it." One of the exclusive rights of copyright is the right to make derivative works (and to foreclose others from doing so).<p>The article claims that copyright is "designed to defeat" wide dissemination of standards. The author would be well-advised to reconsider this in light of open-source licenses such as the GPL, which <i>rely</i> on copyright protection to ensure wide dissemination of works through their viral mechanisms.

In the US, documents you write are generally considered copyrighted whether you put a copyright notice on them or not.<p>If you want to make a document public, it's a pretty good idea to claim the copyright and then release it under a very permissive license.

Having been in attendance at various IETF committee meetings over the years, a standards committee meeting is a meeting that most everyone involved in related areas of nerdery should attend and experience. At least once. But that's another discussion.<p>Copyrights on standards documents can be permissive or restrictive, and can help or can hinder the acceptance of a standard. This is no different than copyrights explicitly or implicitly present on other documents. Having explicit copyright statements is almost always better than having no explicit copyrights; you know where you stand with respect to the contents of the document.