Keep in mind none of these standards are free. It all comes down to who pays for them. Should it be the user? the customer? the public? and how - through purchase price? through taxes? donations? If you want them free, then designate who pays for them and get them to do it.
The last I heard (5+ years ago) about 20% of IEC income was from standards sales. The cost of the standard involves a significant contribution from IEC in international organization and cooperation efforts, administration, meeting arrangements, distribution and postage for development work, policies, PR, translation, etc. If you wish to reduce the costs of standards, these are your targets. The cost of content development is borne by the technical committees. These costs are subsidized by the committee members generally out of self interest in the standards content. You may wish to argue about and improve the efficiency of this system, go ahead, but that was not what started this thread. Regarding copyright, once the standard is completed and copyrighted by IEC, it the rights belong to them. They have the economic rights. You can purchase those rights if you wish to implement them in your national standards. You can also purchase the rights to duplicate the standards. If some organization wishes to purchase worldwide rights to give the standard away I am sure the IEC would be happy to negotiate. There is a certain unfairness in the user cost of standards. I use IEC 950 daily but buy it once. I have also purchased lots of standards I used once. There may be a better way to balance these costs, as through certification fees, but no one is considering it. Bob Johnson ITE Safety Pettit, Ghery wrote: >It does not go back to the people who write the standards, I can >guarantee that. As an active member of CISPR SC I at the USNC and WG2, >WG3 and WG4 level I can assure you that all my employer does is spend >money. The price of the standards (and we have to pay for our copies, >too) goes to IEC HQ. I would imagine it is to help pay for the cost of >running the organization at the IEC level. It does seem a bit strange >to pay about the same price for electronic copies as for hard copies, >when the cost of production is essentially zero. On the other hand, you >can buy a license for 20 copies of the PDF file for the price of 3 >individual copies, so a savings is available when you need a number of >copies. > >Ghery > > - This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: [email protected] David Heald: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
