I’ve been asked to participate in a session at the upcoming SES (the Society for Standards Professionals) convention in Denver next month. The session will be on Standards and Copyright, primarily from an SDO (standards developing organization) point of view. Of course, issues facing SDOs are issues facing the standards using community as a whole. In preparation, I’ll be reviewing some of the material I’ll cover here in my blogs to help organize my thoughts prior to the meeting.
Of course, standards have always lived in “limbo.” U.S. federal level standards (authored primarily GSA and DoD) have been without copyright since their inception. On the other hand, industry standards have always been covered by it. This mixed situation has led some standards users to believe that this type of technical information can be used and shared at will. I remember one engineer telling me that an ASME standard was not covered by copyright. I pointed out the copyright notice inside the front cover. He said, “They don’t mean that.” Like heck they don’t!
So what was previously a problem underneath the surface has really taken center stage. Previously non-compliance occured first at the photocopier, the microfiche reader, and then with unauthorized distribution of CD Roms. You had to go looking to find illegal use of standards. Now the Internet makes the dissemination of information easy and commonplace. Indeed, I find myself frequently in the role of “pirate hunter,” finding unauthorized standards stores online.
An additional factor impacting the discussion is the reliance of many SDOs upon the sale of the standards documents themselves for revenue. Standards just don’t write themselves. The stringent procedural requirements of, say, meeting ANSI protocol costs money. None-the-less, there are also SDOs changing their business models to reflect the desire to “make information free.”
Protection of IP (intellectual property) rights can, in my mind, be divided into 2 challenges. The first is the thievery of the property itself. This is manifested by things like counterfeits, unauthorized posting of documents on the internet, and standards stores that sell unauthorized copies of documents. The second is the movement to make standards available for free. This is a common discussion when issues of IBR (incorporation by reference) of standards in regulatory and legal documents.
When dealing with standards and copyright, SDOs are faced with a situation that must be addressed. Either they react with fear and move to the sidelines or agressively meet the challenge in order to be part of the solution. Certainly, the first step is to educate oneself about the current reality, the next is to find others in a similar situation. The SES session on copyright is intended to help any SDO start to get a handle on both the challenges and on a variety of solutions that are being tested right now. If you’re a standards user or developer, I hope you’ll attend.
