Harmonised technical standards to be publicly available in EU

[switchabl]

Big news today that will likely change the way technical standards are distributed quite a bit.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has decided on appeal that harmonised technical standards need to be accessible to the public, reversing a decision of the General Court from 2021.

Press release: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2024-03/cp240041en.pdf
Full text: https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=283443&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6430150

The court side-stepped the question whether harmonised standards are copyrightable but affirmed that they indeed form part of EU law and as such there is an "overriding public interest in disclosure".

The decision was concerned specifically with four standards relating to toy safety but (IANAL) should in principle be applicable to a wide range of EN standards, including on electrical safety and EMC.

[soldar]

The same issue, whether codes incorporated into laws by referencing them should be free or for pay, is being debated in the USA:

[TimFox]

One thing at issue in the US is that the collections of individual State statutes are usually printed by commercial publishers who organize the statutes and add commentary about court decisions, etc.
Those publishers enforce copyright on their collections.

[themadhippy]

The Court of Justice of the European Union has decided on appeal that harmonised technical standards need to be accessible to the public,

As long as they've deep enough pockets to pay for them

[switchabl]

The Court of Justice of the European Union has decided on appeal that harmonised technical standards need to be accessible to the public,

As long as they've deep enough pockets to pay for them

No, you could always just buy the standards. They requested the documents under No 1049/2001 which is more or less the EU version of the Freedom of Information Act and the court held that the Commission acted unlawfully in refusing this request.

Article 10

Access following an application

1. The applicant shall have access to documents either by consulting them on the spot or by receiving a copy, including, where available, an electronic copy, according to the applicant's preference. The cost of producing and sending copies may be charged to the applicant. This charge shall not exceed the real cost of producing and sending the copies. Consultation on the spot, copies of less than 20 A4 pages and direct access in electronic form or through the register shall be free of charge.

[tom66]

This is nice news to hear.  Historically I have just bought standards from the Estonian Institute as they sell them for a few euros each in some cases, undercutting most of their competitors by a large margin (go Estonia!)  But completely free is even better.  I would go as far to say British Standards should be next - to sell some things in the UK market those standards are needed and whilst many are harmonised with the EU there are areas of difference.  We had to pay thousands of pounds to BSi to get access to some standards.

[themadhippy]

No, you could always just buy the standards. They requested the documents under No 1049/2001 which is more or less the EU version of the Freedom of Information Act and the court held that the Commission acted unlawfully in refusing this request.

Interesting,the short form link didnt make that clear. As  tom66 says it would be nice if british standards were to follow suit, little chance of that happening.

[mendip_discovery]

This is nice news to hear.  Historically I have just bought standards from the Estonian Institute as they sell them for a few euros each in some cases, undercutting most of their competitors by a large margin (go Estonia!)  But completely free is even better.  I would go as far to say British Standards should be next - to sell some things in the UK market those standards are needed and whilst many are harmonised with the EU there are areas of difference.  We had to pay thousands of pounds to BSi to get access to some standards.

Having to pay >£100 for a 1960s standard that is just A5 and 10 pages is just cheeky. I can understand covering the costs of the creation but it does seem like a money-printing system with the added benefit of keeping the riff raff out.

[Benta]

Interesting,the short form link didnt make that clear. As  tom66 says it would be nice if british standards were to follow suit, little chance of that happening.

Who needs them, unless you're still using Whitworth threads and measuring speed in furlongs-per-fortnight.

[SiliconWizard]

Sorry because I didn't read the full appeal so this still sounds fuzzy to me.
What does "publicly available" mean exactly? Completely free of charge? Because those standards have always been "publicly available" as long as you paid for your copy.
Is that some subtle "copyright" thing that will not make much difference in practice? Because obviously, a lot of content that's even in public domain can be distributed for a fee ("edition fee" or whatever).
So if in the end, I have to pay the same amount for a standard, or even more, but with the cozy thought that it's "publicly available", I don't think I care.

Sorry again, I probably haven't understood the depth of this court decision.

[tom66]

Interesting,the short form link didnt make that clear. As  tom66 says it would be nice if british standards were to follow suit, little chance of that happening.

Who needs them, unless you're still using Whitworth threads and measuring speed in furlongs-per-fortnight.

Well, for instance, fire detectors in the UK have additional standards requirements.  BS 5839 for instance.

[tszaboo]

That's nice. I had to buy several standards over the past decade, and it's always a struggle to get management to pay for it. Sometimes its 300-500 EUR just for one standard, and then you might need several. And a year later they come out with an update, and it's a rewrite. Sometimes you have to buy it to be able to figure out which one is actually applicable to your case. Sometimes there are throwaway lines in one standard that reference another one, which you don't have, and buying a standard for one paragraph is... not good.
It also doesn't mean that every NEN or EN standard will be available. But the list is extensive, for example this is   only for the EMC directive:
https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/51314

This is a 27 page long list of EMC harmonized standards.

Sorry because I didn't read the full appeal so this still sounds fuzzy to me.
What does "publicly available" mean exactly? Completely free of charge? Because those standards have always been "publicly available" as long as you paid for your copy.
Is that some subtle "copyright" thing that will not make much difference in practice? Because obviously, a lot of content that's even in public domain can be distributed for a fee ("edition fee" or whatever).
So if in the end, I have to pay the same amount for a standard, or even more, but with the cozy thought that it's "publicly available", I don't think I care.

Sorry again, I probably haven't understood the depth of this court decision.

Relying in particular on the principle of the rule of law and the
principle of free access to the law, the Court considers that the possibility for citizens to acquaint themselves with
those standards may be necessary in order to enable them to verify whether a given product or service actually
complies with the requirements of such legislation.

So free as in beer.

[SiliconWizard]

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.

[coppice]

Having to pay >£100 for a 1960s standard that is just A5 and 10 pages is just cheeky. I can understand covering the costs of the creation but it does seem like a money-printing system with the added benefit of keeping the riff raff out.

Oh come on. They are never just 10 pages. The body of the document might be just half a page, specifying just a couple of measurements, but there will be 10s of pages of title, and preamble, and definition of terms and other waffle.

[coppice]

The decision was concerned specifically with four standards relating to toy safety but (IANAL) should in principle be applicable to a wide range of EN standards, including on electrical safety and EMC.

A lot of the EN documents are the same as IEC and other standards body's documents, with a new header page and number. Isn't there going to be a serious clash there?

[switchabl]

I think the general expectation is that, unless the lawyers find a way to weasel out of it somehow, they will eventually make the standards available for (free) download just like the text of the directives themselves. The standardisation bodies have been complaining quite loudly about how this could destroy the whole standards system. But I think it's ultimately just about the money. A large part of the CEN/CENELEC budget already comes from the EU anyway and I guess there will be some renegotiations and then everyone will move on.

So yes, this will mean shifting some costs to taxpayers. Personally, I think this is fine. Given the fact that we essentially allow industry to write their own, legally binding, regulations through the standards system, the public should have the right to scrutinize them. As a side effect, it lowers the barriers to entry for small businesses and reduces the burden for freelancers.

My understanding is that if the court had struck down copyright on the standards as well, then someone could go and publish them all by themselves tomorrow. The court decided not to rule on that question, so everyone has to request them individually for now or wait for the Commission to figure out their new system.

[coppice]

My understanding is that if the court had struck down copyright on the standards as well, then someone could go and publish them all by themselves tomorrow. The court decided not to rule on that question, so everyone has to request them individually for now or wait for the Commission to figure out their new system.

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.

[Benta]

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.

Are you at the pub? If the document is available at an official "EN" website, who in the world would then download a doctored document from a babushka.ru site?

[tszaboo]

The decision was concerned specifically with four standards relating to toy safety but (IANAL) should in principle be applicable to a wide range of EN standards, including on electrical safety and EMC.

A lot of the EN documents are the same as IEC and other standards body's documents, with a new header page and number. Isn't there going to be a serious clash there?

They are usually are going to be called EN-IEC standard. Or the Dutch case, NEN-EN-IEC.
There will be some clashes, because the same standard is used outside the EU. So for example the same standard will be used in India, and it's going to be called IS-IEC, with some text written in the front. And here is the kicker: Lot of the Indian standards are already available for free:
https://www.scribd.com/document/544729790/is-13849-1993

They will have this cover page. So if you want to download standards for free and read them, you can already do that for some of these. Since the governing body is different, different standards are used, so the ones harmonized in the EU and "used" (not sure what's the proper term) might be different.

[soldar]

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.

I think you are mistaken. The laws the people are supposed to abide by should be in the public domain and have traditionally been that way. Making people pay for the laws they are expected to follow sounds to me like government by the Mafia.

Not only should we be authorized and able to download the laws for free, we should also be allowed to reproduce them, like it has always been.

Suppose there is an argument in a forum between people who argue the law as written allows X and others say no, it explicitly disallows X ... but they cannot quote the law because it is copyright.  It just makes no sense. The laws should always be freely and publicly available to everybody to know, to learn.   Like with many documents, if there is any doubt about the authenticity of the text you can just go to an authorized source and confirm.

[Zero999]

My understanding is that if the court had struck down copyright on the standards as well, then someone could go and publish them all by themselves tomorrow. The court decided not to rule on that question, so everyone has to request them individually for now or wait for the Commission to figure out their new system.

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.

You do know it's possible for something to be made publicly available, for free, whilst also still under copyright?

[5U4GB]

That's nice. I had to buy several standards over the past decade, and it's always a struggle to get management to pay for it. Sometimes its 300-500 EUR just for one standard, and then you might need several. And a year later they come out with an update, and it's a rewrite. Sometimes you have to buy it to be able to figure out which one is actually applicable to your case. Sometimes there are throwaway lines in one standard that reference another one, which you don't have, and buying a standard for one paragraph is... not good.

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.

[5U4GB]

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".

[tom66]

My understanding is that if the court had struck down copyright on the standards as well, then someone could go and publish them all by themselves tomorrow. The court decided not to rule on that question, so everyone has to request them individually for now or wait for the Commission to figure out their new system.

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.

Nothing stops you downloading the FREE standard from a website that is authentic though.

Sadly I can't imagine the argument that won this victory would work in the UK.  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.  If you do not follow a BS standard in your smoke detector and many perish in a fire where your system was installed, you will have to explain your decision to the twelve jurors, and convince them that you were a responsible engineer.

The mess of standards around smoke/fire detection systems is one reason I'm glad I don't work in that industry any more.

[Someone]

Suppose there is an argument in a forum between people who argue the law as written allows X and others say no, it explicitly disallows X ... but they cannot quote the law because it is copyright.

We have that surprisingly often on this forum! Usually from people who "heard" it and cant even point to which standard (let alone clause) confirms it.

[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.

[Jeroen3]

In the netherlands there was a case where explicitly mentioned standards should be freely available.
This was successful, and now there are some freely available standards: https://connect.nen.nl/portal/Registreren/dwingend-verwezen-normen

Several additional cases were attempted afterwards. For example, our constitution states that laws are only in effect after they have been published in the "staatsblad", a official government publication. And, laws cannot have copyright in our copyright law.
There were some more attempts to unlock more standards, but failed since "relevant industry standards" isn't specific enough.

Such case Europe-wide would be nice, but it's easily circumvented by changing laws to say "relevant industry standards".
Don't get your hopes up.

[soldar]

Such case Europe-wide would be nice, but it's easily circumvented by changing laws to say "relevant industry standards".

That would not fly with me.

If the law mentions code or norm explicitly, by name, then that code or norm is part of the law and has to be followed (and should be free).

If the law just says "relevant industry standards" then any lawyer worth his salt is going to argue that anything not freely available is not "relevant industry standard". It can lead to endless arguments about what can be considered "relevant industry standards".

[mikeselectricstuff]

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?)

My county library service had the facility to download non-printable PDFs of BSI standards a while ago, watermarked with the user's login ID - no idea if this is still running

[TimFox]

As I mentioned above, in my student days I could photocopy directly from microfilm and microfiche at libraries.
Specifically, Chicago Public Library had US patents, ASTM standards, as well as major newspapers on film or fiche in the pre-PDF era.

[artag]

I used to go and read them directly at the BSi library which was conveniently close to me in Milton Keynes.

My recollection is that I could read whatever I wanted freely but there were no facilities to print or copy them and I couldn't borrow them. That was before the days when we all started carrying high-resolution digital cameras with us. it would likely be a lot harder to enforce now.

Sadly, the library moved to Richmond and I haven't visited since. I haven't tried to access them via the town library. It would be interesting to find out : I suspect I'd have to wait months for an inter-library loan rather than dig out some microfiche.

I think university libraries may not be an easy solution. They already have a huge problem subscribing to all the for-profit research paper publishers and may well not have paid for similar access to standards. That might depend on the university's departments and specialities. Access to those libraries might also not be trivial. I used to wander into Cranfield University library freely - it's quite a technical university and had lots of interesting references. But security has become an issue and I think it's now necessary to get membership. That might not be free if you're not on the roll.

[switchabl]

A bit of an update on this one. I wanted to see how this would work in practice, so I formally requested access to several harmonised standards through the EU Commission (more specifically, DG GROW). Including the latest version of forum favourite EN IEC 61010-2-033 .

So far, they haven't said no but they keep stalling. Ordinarily, they would have to either provide the requested documents or reasons for refusal within 15 working days. The deadline can be extended by another 15 working days in "exceptional cases", which they have done, citing ongoing consultations within the Commission. They have now informed me that they can't meet the extended deadline either.

I guess they still haven't fully figured out how they are going to deal with this. If nothing happens, I still have a couple of options to escalate my case and keep it moving (short of taking it to court). We'll see.

[EPAIII]

Who needs them?

Have you ever actually cut a thread on a lathe? And it HAD to be compatible with all the others of the same basic description that are out there. The details of thread forms are fairly well available, but by the time you finish researching and UNDERSTANDING all of them, for JUST ONE TYPE OF THREAD, your head will be spinning. I know, I did work from the published standards a time or two and it is not easy. Whenever I can I just rough out the thread form and then use a die or tap of the appropriate class of fit to finish it. There are times when spending even $50 or $100 on a die or tap that will only be used once is a great choice to make.

And that's just thread forms, which are fairly simple. There are so many other mechanical standards.

Have I spent money on mechanical standards? You bet I have. I have not one, but three copies of Machinery's Handbook, two paper and ink and one in PDF format on my computer. And I have additional printed books with standards in them. But there are standards that I have never had copies of. And probably never will unless I have a paying job that requires them.

But this is an electronic board. Electronic standards? Yup, they are out there. I spent over 45 years working as a TV engineer and had to know and follow things like the FCC Rules and Regulations. Most of the TV stations where I worked subscribed to a service that provided them in a thick binder and periodic updates that had to be inserted in it. That cost some money, but I think the FCC itself published them for cost but keeping their binder was more difficult and time consuming.

And electrical standards; I do have a copy of the US NEC. It is out of date but I needed it for a project so I originally bought it new. A professional electrician would probably need to buy a new copy each year or two.

There's a tremendous amount of published standards and YES, they are needed and USED.

Interesting,the short form link didnt make that clear. As  tom66 says it would be nice if british standards were to follow suit, little chance of that happening.

Who needs them, unless you're still using Whitworth threads and measuring speed in furlongs-per-fortnight.

[EPAIII]

In the past, over my career, there have been many times that I needed a "published" standard. Many, dare I say MOST of those times, the length of that standard was hundreds of pages and the cost of that standard was hundreds of dollars, even over $1000 in some cases. This at a time when a hard cover book cost around $10 and even college texts around $50. The authors of the standard or more likely the company they worked for and which OWNED the copyright, were just plain greedy. They had it and if you wanted/needed a copy, you had to pay THEIR price.

And many times I did only need one or two pages of those hundreds and hundreds. Explaining that to a cost conscious manager can be difficult, to say the least.

There were times when I asked friends who worked for companies that were direct competitors of mine for a few copied pages. TV engineers were usually a friendly bunch because you never knew when you would need a favor in return. Of course, management didn't understand this either, even when it directly benefited them.

Having to pay >£100 for a 1960s standard that is just A5 and 10 pages is just cheeky. I can understand covering the costs of the creation but it does seem like a money-printing system with the added benefit of keeping the riff raff out.

Oh come on. They are never just 10 pages. The body of the document might be just half a page, specifying just a couple of measurements, but there will be 10s of pages of title, and preamble, and definition of terms and other waffle.