Standards: Free or Sold?

Roy Rada, and John Berg

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 1995)

Recently Carl Malamud suggested in his book, "Exploring the Internet" (Interop Publishers, California), that standards should be free! The fees from the sale of standards and the stringent policies on sharing copies of standards may decrease the number of people who access these documents and may thus reduce the impact of the standards. Consider two scenarios. In one scenario, information technology (IT) standards continue to be available only through "official" sources and the prices of standards documents continue at their present levels. In the other scenario, if information technology standards were available through the Internet on public domain file servers, many users and vendors could find and read the standards, and the efforts of the standards developers may produce greater and quicker results. While the latter possibility is speculative, the former clearly describes the current world. Yet, many lawmakers realize that information technology has become a public good, and IT's importance to society, commerce, and international relationships will only increase.