A few days ago, ISO has confirmed that the country, currency and language codes are freely usable:
<http://www.iso.org/iso/en/commcentre/pressreleases/2003/Ref871.html> | Ref.: 871 | 30 September 2003 | | ISO reaffirms free-of-charge use of its country, currency and language | codes | | ISO issues the following statement in response to recently publicized | misunderstandings of its current practice and intentions regarding its | widely used country, currency and language codes. | | * ISO is to continue with its established practice of allowing | free-of-charge use of its country, currency and language codes | from, respectively, the ISO 3166, ISO 4217 and ISO 639 standards, | in commercial and other applications. | | * There is no proposal currently being considered by ISO to impose | charges for use of these codes, including on the World Wide Web | and in software applications. | | Based on international consensus reached within the ISO standards | development system, these codes reduce the confusion that could be | created if there were multiple, conflicting codes in common use. The | development of the Web and of electronic commerce has been facilitated | by the existence of the ISO standardized codes and their use has become | pervasive. | | ISO encourages such developments by making the two-letter country codes | contained in ISO 3166 available free of charge on ISO's Web site, along | with a great deal of regularly updated information related to the codes | and their use. The ISO Web site also has hyperlinks to the sites of the | British Standards Institution (BSI) and the US Library of Congress - | where the currency and language codes are, respectively, publicly | available. | | [...] This clarifies previous statements which indicated that a license fee might be necessary. (I think this was discussed before on this list, but I can't find the relevant message.)
