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From: Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: EMC compliance question
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2024 13:38:50 -0700
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On 10/12/2024 3:06 AM, Chris Jones wrote:
> The standards bodies are parasites on society, as bad as the worst academic 
> publishers.

To be fair, one typically has a financial interest (e.g., product
development) that merits access to a "Standard".  And, an organization
really only needs *one* copy thereof.

What I don't fathom is why academics would want to (tolerate) insert
some "impediment" to access for their publications who adds no real
value.  There, one would think you would want as widespread distribution
as possible (as "publication" is a metric for academics; if no one
is *consuming* your research, what value that?).  I.e., one could
expect many individuals at a single organization to have copies of
specific papers without even being aware of their presence in other
cubicles.

> The standards committees are composed of volunteers, often working 
> for universities or companies who pay their salaries, but never paid by the 
> standards body for their free labour. Then the standards are copyrighted and 
> sold at a huge profit, often to the same organisations whose experts 
> contributed all of the value incorporated in the standards. The standards 
> bodies are generally non-profit organisations, and they ensure this non-profit 
> characteristic by increasing the pay of their directors until they run out of 
> profit.

In the days of dead tree publication, one could understand the need
for someone to undertake this activity.  Just typesetting a document
can be a significant task.

But, given the prevalence of DTP tools and the ease of self-publishing,
this activity seems to be obsolescent -- in THAT form.

> The standards become referenced in laws, and thereby have the force of law, but 
> are copyrighted by a private entity, and not even the politicians writing the 
> laws incorporating these standards can read them without paying.
> 
> Do not ever volunteer your time to work on a proprietary standard.
> 
> Here is a nice video by Carl Malamud (of https://public.resource.org/ ):
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tOJdGaMvVw
> 
> He had a legal victory: There has been some European court decision that in 
> future they will have to allow public access to standards written into law:
> 
> https://www.heise.de/news/EuGH-Entscheid-Europaeische-Normen-muessen-gratis-zugaenglich-sein-9646757.html

That doesn't really help folks who are *not* in europe.

And, legislation with similar goals has often been subverted, stateside.
The folks victimized don't seem to have a loud enough voice to make
a difference.  (witness the right-to-repair movement)