Martin and all, What I've done in the past is call the IEEE and talk to one of the copyright people. For conference proceedings, I've been told it's OK to distribute and, as I recall, even to post the article as long as the IEEE conference is cited. I take the version that appears in the proceedings and post that; it has the IEEE information toward the bottom of the title page. They would like you to call them first or notify them by mail of what you want to do (some such statement used to appear on the electronic copyright form---I haven't looked at the most recent one). Regards, Mike
However, for my last paper, I was sent a copyright form, by IEEE, to be electronically signed. There were no means of crossing things out or adding my own clauses, and no options for printing the form and faxing it! Moreover, there was a short deadline for signing it, on the grounds that otherwise my paper wouldn't make it for the proceedings, and hence no opportunity to negotiate.