Joint Communique from ISO and IEC: "Legal action against the European Commission’s decision regarding its implementation of ECJ Case C-588/21 has been initiated so that we may continue to deliver effectively on our missions globally for the benefit of everyone. This action is aimed at safeguarding the integrity of international standards and protecting the infrastructure that supports their development." https://www.linkedin.com/posts/luca-bertuzzi-186729130_huge-the-eu-standard-setting-architecture-activity-7275445905367928832-7K1K/
If you don't speak official Europeaneese, let me translate. ISO (and IEC!) are suing the European Commission for complying with the Court of Justice of the European Union's (CJEU) decision that access to EU law is of "overriding public importance." They filed this suit in the CJEU. Our position is that the CJEU decision was rightly decided.
@carlmalamud It's excellent timing as the EU is currently deciding whether regulation 1025/2012 needs revision. This case makes it exceptionally clear that, whatever the outcome of the case, a change is definitely needed to ensure harmonised standards are freely available as the law requires.
@webmink Some may argue that "readability rooms" and other forms of highly conditional access is fine for the general public and other casual citizens and that our radical proposal to seize the means of legal construction and nationalize the law smacks of communism. I'm sure there's some happy meeting ground in the middle.
@carlmalamud I have sensed no appetite for voluntary compromise of any kind, and the lawsuit signals that. That attitude mirrors the view among SEP-dependent legacy corporations (who also seem to support ISO's view) that any accommodation of open source is a step too far. Heck, if you can read the standards for free you might want to implement them for free too.
@webmink @carlmalamud Apologize that I haven't read the documents, but is there proof that ISO income from selling documents is what sustains the standards effort? Having watched W3C diminish due to lack of $$ I am concerned that we need some new approach to funding standards. (I agree that standards behind paywalls are "standard" only for the few.)
@kcoyle I don't believe there is, not least because organisations like ETSI and OASIS flourish without it. But ISO and the rest of the national standards organisation hierarchy take it as given.
Note that, like the equally dodgy example of academic publishing, the funding of de jure standards development is not connected with the funding of the publication mechanism. I suspect this is the thing that's about to have to be brought blinking into the daylight.