Dear Peter,

Thank you for your question. In principle, the copyright holder of material (document, website, etc.) is the creator of this material or the person whom the copyright license for this material has been given to.

A copyright holder can be a natural person or a legal person.

The RIPE NCC is the copyright holder for, among others, the RIPE NCC documents and the RIPE NCC website. The copyright statement “Copyright © 1992-2009 the Réseaux Européen Network Coordination Centre RIPE NCC All rights restricted” refers to this kind of material.

For RIPE Policy documents, the RIPE community does not have the form of a legal person. Therefore, in this case, the copyright holder is the individual creator of each policy. This is reason for the Attribution section at the end of the revised document.

These topics were discussed during the presentation “Authorship of RIPE Policy Documents” at RIPE 60.

For documentation, please see:

- Presentation:

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-60/presentations/Yilmaz-Authorship_of_RIPE_Policy_Documents.pdf

- Webcast:

http://ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-60/flash-video.php?day=Wednesday&pres=Filiz%20Yilmaz%20-%20Authorship%20of%20RIPE%20Policy%20Documents%20-%202.flv

- Transcripts:

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-60/steno-transcripts.php?steno=Main-100505-AM2

Kind regards,

Emilio Madaio

Policy Development Officer

RIPE NCC

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 03:30:31PM +0200, Emilio Madaio wrote:

RIPE Policy Documents, without changing their substance or meaning. This 
project is aimed at improving the clarity and readability of RIPE 
Documents. For more information, see:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/updated-documents/ 

thanks, this is a helpful effort.

The first RIPE Document to be revised was "Autonomous System (AS) Number 
Assignment Policies and Procedures". The revised document is now 
available at:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-496.html

The predecessor at <http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-463.html> has this
copyright note in the footer: "© RIPE Community. All rights reserved".
The updated version <http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-496.html> now points
to the standard disclaimer <http://www.ripe.net/legal/copyright-statement.html>,
which reads "Copyright (c) 1992-2009 the Réseaux IP Européen Network
Coordination Centre RIPE NCC. All rights restricted."

The second paragraph then clarifies that policy documents are not
covered by this NCC copyright and the second last paragraph says
"Please be advised that no copyrights originate with the RIPE community but
 instead with the creator of the material, whether that be the RIPE NCC or any
 other individual or organisation whose material appears on the RIPE NCC
 website or RIPE website."

So, for the curious, who holds the copyrights for the RIPE policy
documents?

-Peter