Standards piracy — it’s a thorn in the side of most standards developing organizations. And as many of you know, I’m constantly finding websites that sell standards illegally. This means in my role as President of Document Center Inc., I work closely with a number of standards developing organizations to help shut down these sites for pirated standards. In fact, yesterday I found one that included the ANSI logo as part of it’s branding in the header information!
Lately I’ve noticed that when I identify sites involved in standards piracy, they get taken down rather quickly. How is this happening? Turns out that the Standardization Administration of China (SAC) and ISO have teamed up to address the problem. And since the primary offenders are located in China, this is one way to curb the problem.
According to Guo Hui’s news piece at the ISO website (posted on March 4th), a special campaign was set up in 2010 to combat the problem of Internet piracy of intellectual property in general. Dubbed “Sword Net Action,” the initiative started to focus specifically on standards in 2013.
Why the special attention on standards piracy? First, there were two (famous in the standards community, by the way) cases brought to trial in China. One was against a Mr. Wang and the other against a Mr. Chen. They are notorious for using multiple front ends to dish up the same web server information, touting the sale of standards at “too good to be true” prices. Both got prison terms which were not too long, but which generated plenty of local publicity.
Then, the desire of the Chinese government to promote trade, which means using valid documents and playing nicely with the international standards community, must have certainly have had an impact as well. World Standards Day in 2014 was used as an educational event to let Chinese standards users understand the rationale for the use of authorized editions of standards.
Net result? Standards are now on the list of “ten targeted cases” of the “Sword Net Action” campaign. It may still be a game of “whack-a-mole,” but those moles are getting whacked at an increasing rapid pace! This is a real tribute to the desire of the Chinese government and it’s standardization arm to promote IP protection to this type of material.
If you’re interested in this topic as much as I am, I urge you to read the ISO News Release for yourself. It’s a great synopsis of what’s been happening in China. And it again discusses the size of the market for standards and the real dangers that pirating sites like these pose. Both ISO and SAC are to be commended for their joint efforts to end this despicable and dangerous practice.
Let me know if you happen to come upon any standards piracy sites. I’ll forward the information on to the appropriate contacts. You can reach me at info@document-center.com.
