"Conditions Regarding the Use of SWGDE Documents"

SWGDE is the Scientific Working Group on Digital Evidence. Its website describes it as a meta-organization—a group that “brings together organizations actively engaged in the field of digital and multimedia evidence to foster communication and cooperation as well as to ensure quality and consistency within the forensic community.” Structured as a non-profit corporation, it solicits "your donations or sponsorship." \1/ Its 70 “member organizations” consist of (by a quick and possibly error-prone categorization and count):

• 16 local, state, and federal police agencies; \2/
• 4 digital forensics software companies; \3/
• 18 training and consulting organizations; \4/
• 6 prosecutors' offices; \5/
• 8 crime laboratories and coroners' or medical examiners' offices; \6/
• 3 major corporations; \7/
• 3 universities; \8/
• A swath of federal executive agencies (or parts of them), including NASA, NIST, and the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, Labor, and Treasury. \9/

SWGDE has produced “countless academic papers,” although none are listed on its website. SWGDE "encourages the use and redistribution of our documents," but it regards them as private property. It states that "The Disclaimer and Redistribution policies (also included in the cover pages to each document) also establish what is considered SWGDE's Intellectual Property."

These policies are unusual, if not unique, among among standards developing organizations. An IP lawyer would find it odd, I think, to read that admonitions such as the following are part of an author's copyright:

Individuals may not misstate and/or over represent [sic] duties and responsibilities of SWGDE work. This includes claiming oneself as a contributing member without actively participating in SWGDE meetings; claiming oneself as an officer of SWGDE without serving as such ... .

With respect to actual IP rights, SWGDE purports to control not only the specific expression of ideas—as allowed by copyright law—but all "information" contained in its documents—a claim that far exceeds the scope of copyright. It imposes the following "condition to the use of this document (and the information contained herein) in any judicial, administrative, legislative, or other adjudicatory proceeding in the United States or elsewhere":

notification by e-mail before or contemporaneous to the introduction of this document, or any portion thereof, as a marked exhibit offered for or moved into evidence in such proceeding. The notification should include: 1) The formal name of the proceeding, including docket number or similar identifier; 2) the name and location of the body conducting the hearing or proceeding; and 3) the name, mailing address (if available) and contact information of the party offering or moving the document into evidence. Subsequent to the use of this document in the proceeding please notify SWGDE as to the outcome of the matter.

As author (or otherwise), an SDO certainly can ask readers to do anything it would like them to do with its publications—and the SWGDE "conditions regarding use" do contain the phrase "the SWGDE requests." Even reformulating the paragraph as a polite request rather than a demand supposedly supported by copyright law, however, one might ask what legislative proceeding with a "formal name" would have a forensic-science standard "offered or moved into evidence." Impeachment and subsequent trial, I guess.

Notes

1. Neither its full name nor its acronym turned up in a search of the IRS list of tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations, so donors seeking a charitable deduction on their taxes might need to inquire further.
2. As listed on the website, they are the Columbus, Ohio Police Department; Eugene Police Department; Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE); Lawrence, KS Police Department; Johnson County, KS Sheriff's Office; Los Angeles County, CA Sheriff's Department; Louisville, KY Metro Police Department; Massachusetts State Police; Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation; New York State Police; New York City Police Department (NYPD); Plano, TX Police Department; Seattle Police Department; Weld County, CO Sheriff's Office; US Department of Justice - Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); US Department of Homeland Security - US Secret Service (USSS); and the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).
3. Amped Software USA Inc.; AVPreserve; BlackRainbow; SecurCube.
4. National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C); Digital Forensics.US LLC / Veritek Cyber Solutions; MetrTech Consultancy; Midwest Forensic Consultants LLC; Hexordia; Forensic Data Corp; Forensic Video & Audio Associates, Inc; Laggui And Associates, Inc.; Loehrs Forensics; N1 Discovery; Precision Digital Forensics, Inc. (PDFI); Premier Cellular Mapping & Analytics; Primeau Forensics, Recorded Evidence Solutions, LLC; AVPreserve; LTD; BEK TEK; TransPerfect Legal Solutions; VTO Labs; Unique Wire, Inc
5. Adams County, CO District Attorney's Office; Burlington County, NJ Prosecutor's Office; Dallas County, TX District Attorneys Office; Middlesex County, NJ Prosecutor's Office; State of Wisconsin Department of Justice; US Department of Justice - Executive Office United States Attorney Generals Office.
6. City of Phoenix, AZ Crime Lab; Houston Forensic Science Center; Boulder County Coroner's Office; Miami-Dade County, FL; Medical Examiner Department; Virginia Department of Forensic Science; Westchester County, NY Forensic Lab; North Carolina State Crime Laboratory; and the US Department of Defense - Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory (Army CID).
7. Carrier Corporation; Target Corporation; and Walmart Stores Inc.
8. San Jose State University; University of Colorado Denver - National Center for Media Forensics (NCMF); University of Wisconsin Stevens Point.
9. NASA Office of Inspector General - Computer Crimes Division; National Institute of Standards and Technology; Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration; US Department of Defense - Defense Cyber Crimes Center (DC3); US Department of Homeland Security - Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); US Department of Justice - Office of the Inspector General (DOJ OIG); US Department of Labor - Office of Inspector General (DOL OIG); US Department of the Interior - Office of the Inspector General (DOI OIG); US Department of Treasury - Internal Revenue Service (IRS); US Postal Service - Office of Inspector General (Postal OIG). Yet another organizational member is the Puerto Rico Office of the Comptroller, Division of Database Analysis, Digital Forensic and Technological Development.