Copyright status of early Internet RFCs

A friend of mine wants to republish some early documents in the Arpanet/Internet RFC series in a book. The ones he is interested in are all from before 1976, and none contain any copyright notice. (The latter is easily verified by searching the online versions for the strings "copyright" and "(c)".) They're by many different authors, some were produced under DARPA contracts, but I don't think all of them were. There is a tradition that reproduction is permitted, but I can't find that codified anywhere. The guy who edited the series at the time has died, so we can't ask him. Later editors of the RFC series have apparently made retroactive claims about earlier documents, but I get the feeling it's people who know more about the IP protocol than about IP law playing Junior Lawyer.

My understanding is that if something was published in the U.S. before 1976 without a notice, it's P.D. Is there any reason to think he can't just go ahead and republish?

TIA,
John Levine, johnl[_at_]iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. Received on Fri Apr 07 2006 - 05:00:01 GMT