Harmonised technical standards to be publicly available in EU

[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.

[Monkeh]

Who needs them?

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.

That was just Benta taking a cheap shot at British Standards, not questioning the need for standards. Of course, he's likely never read any British Standards, nor is he aware how many of them drive ISO and IEC standards..