Harmonised technical standards to be publicly available in EU

[coppice]

I think its important that standards have tight copyright control. The last thing we want is people pushing out all sorts of doctored copies of these documents that can't be trusted. No copyright means no control.

This is standard excuse #1 from organisations like ISO. 

As an argument it's about as persuasive as "everyone should learn latin because it structures the mind".

What a bogus argument. We have to comply with standards, or there are legal consequences. If you can't have some trust that the document you are using is an accurate copy of the current in force revision of the standard, how can you ever verify compliance? Do you want the country's laws subject to people tampering with the content without consequence? I'll add "this does not apply to coppice" to all of them, and make sure those revisions get widely distributed.

[tom66]

I think its important that standards have tight copyright control. The last thing we want is people pushing out all sorts of doctored copies of these documents that can't be trusted. No copyright means no control.

This is standard excuse #1 from organisations like ISO. 

As an argument it's about as persuasive as "everyone should learn latin because it structures the mind".

What a bogus argument. We have to comply with standards, or there are legal consequences. If you can't have some trust that the document you are using is an accurate copy of the current in force revision of the standard, how can you ever verify compliance? Do you want the country's laws subject to people tampering with the content without consequence? I'll add "this does not apply to coppice" to all of them, and make sure those revisions get widely distributed.

How does that prevent iso.org from releasing official standards for free?  If you want to be really cautious about it, they could even digitally sign the documents with their key so you can be certain the document is from ISO and not anyone else.

[coppice]

British Standards are copyright BSi, and they are not the only legal way to implement something, but in many cases they are the only way that has been documented.

Those copyrights are mostly bogus. They put their own copyright on a lot of stuff which is just imported from another standards group. People are really bad about this kind of thing. Google are real scum bags over taking other people's copyrights notices out of source code files, and inserting their own.

[kosine]

British Standards (and possibly others) have always been publicly available for free at your local library. The caveat is/was that they arrived on microfiche so you couldn't copy them. Nothing to stop you writing down all the important bits, though. (Not sure how the system works these days. Does anyone even still use microfiche?)

[coppice]

I think its important that standards have tight copyright control. The last thing we want is people pushing out all sorts of doctored copies of these documents that can't be trusted. No copyright means no control.

This is standard excuse #1 from organisations like ISO. 

As an argument it's about as persuasive as "everyone should learn latin because it structures the mind".

What a bogus argument. We have to comply with standards, or there are legal consequences. If you can't have some trust that the document you are using is an accurate copy of the current in force revision of the standard, how can you ever verify compliance? Do you want the country's laws subject to people tampering with the content without consequence? I'll add "this does not apply to coppice" to all of them, and make sure those revisions get widely distributed.

How does that prevent iso.org from releasing official standards for free?  If you want to be really cautious about it, they could even digitally sign the documents with their key so you can be certain the document is from ISO and not anyone else.

There might be a reasonable way of replacing copyright control with something like that, but one way or another you need to be able to trust the documents you are trying to comply with are genuine.

[coppice]

British Standards (and possibly others) have always been publicly available for free at your local library. The caveat is/was that they arrived on microfiche so you couldn't copy them. Nothing to stop you writing down all the important bits, though. (Not sure how the system works these days. Does anyone even still use microfiche?)

That's viable for looking up a few figures, but when its things like protocol standards its completely unrealistic. You need the documents at your side for extended periods.

Do local libraries still have those microfiche systems? I remember looking things up at the local library in the 1970s, when they were novel technology, and the librarians were eager to show off their new toys.

[HwAoRrDk]

Those copyrights are mostly bogus. They put their own copyright on a lot of stuff which is just imported from another standards group.

I don't know about the copyright situation, but I have seen a BS document that was literally the ISO document with a BSI cover page.

[coppice]

Those copyrights are mostly bogus. They put their own copyright on a lot of stuff which is just imported from another standards group.

I don't know about the copyright situation, but I have seen a BS document that was literally the ISO document with a BSI cover page.

A huge number of ISO documents can be found published as national documents. Usually with something close to the ISO document number, with "BS", "EN", "GB", or other local  identifier prepended.

[5U4GB]

If you can't have some trust that the document you are using is an accurate copy of the current in force revision of the standard, how can you ever verify compliance? Do you want the country's laws subject to people tampering with the content without consequence?

So you're saying that a country's laws, which have been available freely for centuries at least and have never had this problem, are somehow different from the standard for making a cup of tea, which the minute it's made freely available will have hordes of bogeymen descend on it and change the recipe and republish the doctored version because... well I don't know, it's such an illogical argument that you'll have to provide the reasoning because it's your (well, ISO's) argument, not mine.

Do you work for a standards body by any chance?

[5U4GB]

How does that prevent iso.org from releasing official standards for free?  If you want to be really cautious about it, they could even digitally sign the documents with their key so you can be certain the document is from ISO and not anyone else.

Well, first of all you'd have to demonstrate that such a problem even exists.  Since we've had laws and regulations freely available for centuries without this problem occurring, I await @coppice's response with interest.

[tszaboo]

Those copyrights are mostly bogus. They put their own copyright on a lot of stuff which is just imported from another standards group.

I don't know about the copyright situation, but I have seen a BS document that was literally the ISO document with a BSI cover page.

A huge number of ISO documents can be found published as national documents. Usually with something close to the ISO document number, with "BS", "EN", "GB", or other local  identifier prepended.

But often times it's not just a cover page. I have several examples, where there are extra parts in the "NEN-EN-" parts which overrides the part of the "-IEC" part with quite significant changes, that would make your product non compliant with the harmonized standards. So as the manufacturer, you still have to buy the national standards so these cases can be avoided. Because either you are incorrect in the EU DoC to be compliant with the "NEN-EN-IEC xxxx" standard, or in case you need to certify the product, the Notified Body would simply throw it back as non compliant with the national differences.

[coppice]

If you can't have some trust that the document you are using is an accurate copy of the current in force revision of the standard, how can you ever verify compliance? Do you want the country's laws subject to people tampering with the content without consequence?

So you're saying that a country's laws, which have been available freely for centuries at least and have never had this problem, are somehow different from the standard for making a cup of tea, which the minute it's made freely available will have hordes of bogeymen descend on it and change the recipe and republish the doctored version because... well I don't know, it's such an illogical argument that you'll have to provide the reasoning because it's your (well, ISO's) argument, not mine.

Do you work for a standards body by any chance?

That argument doesn't seem to make sense at all. You would need to expand on what you mean. Laws are normally published and controlled by a single body in any one jurisdiction. Various books may be used from teaching, but you always go back to a trustable copy of the law from the prime source for anything important. People are always trying to twist what laws mean, stretching things to the limit. The same is true with standards. Various books teach about, say, the EMC standards, but you can't trust those when testing. You need to work to the letter of the standard, and you need a trustworthy copy.

I'm someone who has had enough trouble with standards documents which turned out to be poorly identified drafts, or were not up to date, that I do not want additional trouble by not being able to trust a document was ever from the standards body.

[coppice]

But often times it's not just a cover page. I have several examples, where there are extra parts in the "NEN-EN-" parts which overrides the part of the "-IEC" part with quite significant changes, that would make your product non compliant with the harmonized standards. So as the manufacturer, you still have to buy the national standards so these cases can be avoided. Because either you are incorrect in the EU DoC to be compliant with the "NEN-EN-IEC xxxx" standard, or in case you need to certify the product, the Notified Body would simply throw it back as non compliant with the national differences.

I think a lot of those minor changes are specifically to force you to buy essentially the same document many times over to supply the global market. Sometimes they are genuine adaptations to local condition. Often they are little more than pointless changes you need to go through with a fine toothed comb, just to find they really don't matter.

[Monkeh]

that I do not want additional trouble by not being able to trust a document was ever from the standards body.

And when they're freely available directly from the standards body, that won't be an issue, now will it?

[nctnico]

If they become as "freely" available as EU directives (which are downloadable indeed, for free and without even a registration to anything required), then I'll call that a win.
Can't wait to see that.

Now elaborating those standards has a cost though, and making them completely free of charge (if that's the case) will imply shifting costs from companies (and the very, very few individuals who would otherwise have bought them) to tax payers. Just saying.

The tax payer pay for it anyway as the cost of the standards is embedded in the product price.

Still, I think it is good that the standards we all must adhere to become more accessible.

[NiHaoMike]

I think its important that standards have tight copyright control. The last thing we want is people pushing out all sorts of doctored copies of these documents that can't be trusted. No copyright means no control.

Cryptographically sign the documents. It's a long solved problem.

[rogerggbr]

...  Even the standards committee members, the people whose unpaid labour created the standard, often don't have access to the final thing. 

Having once been on a committee, that sent a representative to BSI, in turn sending a representative to IEC, I can say that most of those writing and editing standards are paid (as I was then). They all work for companies that have an interest in the standard. There may of course be exceptions, but of the ones I was involved with it was mainly very large companies sponsoring their top brains to go to these meetings and contribute accordingly. All the folks I met were doing it for the right reasons - make it better, but I am sure you can find exceptions.
The costs charged by national standards bodies were representative of a time where controlling and printing were not insignificant, so they charged. A lot. I don't buy many standards now and am no longer a member of BSI so can not get the discount. I have said this before but if you need to review or learn about a particular standard go to your local university library where they likely have unlimited access.

[coppice]

...  Even the standards committee members, the people whose unpaid labour created the standard, often don't have access to the final thing. 

Having once been on a committee, that sent a representative to BSI, in turn sending a representative to IEC, I can say that most of those writing and editing standards are paid (as I was then). They all work for companies that have an interest in the standard. There may of course be exceptions, but of the ones I was involved with it was mainly very large companies sponsoring their top brains to go to these meetings and contribute accordingly. All the folks I met were doing it for the right reasons - make it better, but I am sure you can find exceptions.
The costs charged by national standards bodies were representative of a time where controlling and printing were not insignificant, so they charged. A lot. I don't buy many standards now and am no longer a member of BSI so can not get the discount. I have said this before but if you need to review or learn about a particular standard go to your local university library where they likely have unlimited access.

Its normal for the people who develop standards to be paid by their employers. Those employers also pay heavy fees to be members of the standards body. The standards body merely has to do some admin, and distribution of the documents. That used to be a substantial publishing job, but its now just making PDFs available from a web site. Their costs have gone way down. The prices of those documents haven't. Some bodies, like the ITU, faced up to this some time ago, and made all their specs available for free download. Most haven't.

[TimFox]

British Standards (and possibly others) have always been publicly available for free at your local library. The caveat is/was that they arrived on microfiche so you couldn't copy them. Nothing to stop you writing down all the important bits, though. (Not sure how the system works these days. Does anyone even still use microfiche?)

I don’t know the current status of microfiche and microfilm in public libraries, but in my student days the library fiche and film readers had photocopy built in, with page payment charges comparable to regular photocopies.

[Zero999]

I think its important that standards have tight copyright control. The last thing we want is people pushing out all sorts of doctored copies of these documents that can't be trusted. No copyright means no control.

This is standard excuse #1 from organisations like ISO. 

As an argument it's about as persuasive as "everyone should learn latin because it structures the mind".

What a bogus argument. We have to comply with standards, or there are legal consequences. If you can't have some trust that the document you are using is an accurate copy of the current in force revision of the standard, how can you ever verify compliance? Do you want the country's laws subject to people tampering with the content without consequence? I'll add "this does not apply to coppice" to all of them, and make sure those revisions get widely distributed.

How does that prevent iso.org from releasing official standards for free?  If you want to be really cautious about it, they could even digitally sign the documents with their key so you can be certain the document is from ISO and not anyone else.

There might be a reasonable way of replacing copyright control with something like that, but one way or another you need to be able to trust the documents you are trying to comply with are genuine.

Just only download from the ISO, or whatever, website and you know it's genuine, assuming the site hasn't been compromised of course. Problem solved.

Standards being behind a paywall is more of a problem because people are incentivised to obtain pirate copies, which might be, incomplete,  outdated and have the dates changed to appear to be up to date.

And as I hinted at before, content can be distributed feely and still be under strict copyright. For example, Dave puts his videos on YouTube and allows millions to watch them for free, but he still owns the copyright. If someone started uploading them to their own channel or website, when I'm sure he would pursue them for copyright violation.

[Nominal Animal]

This is why there's a vast informal exchange of draft standards conveniently leaked from standards committees.  Even the standards committee members, the people whose unpaid labour created the standard, often don't have access to the final thing. 

And by "draft" I don't mean version 0.01 but pretty much the final version just with a few formatting changes not yet done.  I have way, waaay more draft standards than actual ones, for all of the reasons you give above.  It's funny doing work for some mega-corporation and noticing that they're all working from printouts of drafts as well, this standardised stupidity affects everyone not just the less financially able.

My favourite examples of these are the ISO 9899, aka C language, standards.  200€+ from ISO, but fortunately the final drafts (C23 - N3096, C17 - N2176, C11 - N1570, C99 - N1256) have been published by the committee at the Open Standards web site (which itself is sponsored by the Technical University of Denmark, DTU).

Of course, the EU harmonization thing does not affect such standards, unless they are referenced as part of EU law.  So for the C standards, nothing will change.  But kudos and high respect for the committee making key drafts publicly accessible.

I am a proponent for free and open standards, because I consider them essential for a technological society and fairness in competition, and thus worth taxpayers support.
What I would prefer to avoid is support an administration-heavy organization where the administrators get paid better than those who actually develop the standards...

[Someone]

I have said this before but if you need to review or learn about a particular standard go to your local university library where they likely have unlimited access.

Not so anymore, that loophole has been closed over here (DRM on the documents which requires validation of your identity to even view the "not for actual use" standards).

[zilp]

There might be a reasonable way of replacing copyright control with something like that, but one way or another you need to be able to trust the documents you are trying to comply with are genuine.

Erm ... that's just completely backwards!?

Currently, they are under copyright control and not available for free from a trusted source, which is why there is an incentive to use copies from questionable sources instead.

If they have to be available for free from a trusted source, that removes the incentive to use copies from questionable sources as you can always refer to the trusted source without overhead or other drawbacks.

If untrusted sources offer copies, that is only a problem if there is some other advantage to using those sources, not if you can trivially get a trusted copy.

[5U4GB]

Cryptographically sign the documents. It's a long solved problem.

It's a solution to a problem that most likely doesn't exist.

Luckily we've got a large-scale, decades-old real-world counterexample to the ISO model.  It's the IETF model.  IETF standards have been freely available to anyone and everyone for decades, and are posted and re-posted... well, let's take a security-critical standard that a good chunk of the Internet relies on and that you're using right now to read this, RFC 5246.  Google gives 182,000 hits for that, of which some admittedly will be references, but lets say there's at least tens of thousands of copies of that floating around, including in .ru, .cn, and for some reason I'm not getting anything for .kp but I bet there's copies there too.  They're plain text files that anyone with the most basic tools can modify as much as they want.

As far as anyone knows, there have been approximately, oh, zero cases of anyone posting maliciously modified copies of it.

The nonsense about "we need to keep control to prevent this imaginary threat from materialising" is nothing more than ISO (and similar) propaganda to justify their charging outrageous amounts of money for what other standards bodies provide at no cost.  Unfortunately like other types of propaganda they've been shouting it for so long that some people now appear to believe it.

An update, just had a look at a copy on a random Russian site, here, since there was a mention of "would you trust something from some site in Russia".  This isn't the English original but a complete translation into Russian (try doing that with a paywalled standard), and seems to be the same as the English original.  So with freely-available standards you definitely can now download it from a random site in Russia, and it's now translated into Russian, and the world hasn't ended because of it.

[5U4GB]

Standards being behind a paywall is more of a problem because people are incentivised to obtain pirate copies, which might be, incomplete,  outdated and have the dates changed to appear to be up to date.

There are at least two standards I work with frequently where many if not all of the implementations are based on the specs given in informally-circulated drafts rather than the final standard.  In one case it took something like 20 years to get most things aligned to the final standard, in the other I think everyone just uses the draft form because everything else out there also uses it.