PAID IS BEST - Free Models Not Sustainable
Giles Grant, General Manager, British Standards Commercial

After listing "Customer demand for cheaper information" as one of the challenges faced by National Standards Bodies, Grant cautions, "Don't Devalue. If standards become a commodity, standards facilitation will not be sustainable."

(From the presentation "Combining a National Standards Body with a Standards Business" at the Standards Engineering Society Conference 2001. See the complete presentation here.)

FREE IS BEST - Access Should be Easy
From Donald Carroll

I have been using the Federal Paint Standards for 40 some years.

They are no longer applicable or relevant, except to show what the ASA and ASTM standards should be! AND THEY WERE FREE, that's the only thing wrong with them from the ASA, ASTM, AD&HI, ASME, U/L Underwriters Laboratories, ad infinatum

What good is a standard that costs $ 250 to 3000 to access? No one is going to spend the money except the regulators, and then only every 4 or 5 years.

The cost is so high that no one uses them.

Perish the thought that an interested citizen might access these and find out how he or she is being defrauded or victimised without having to bankrupt themselves to gain access.

My second complaint is that even after you have paid for and secured access the issuing authority routinely issues diametrically opposite opinions, telling you one thing, and the regulator something else, even in the case of U/L routinely contradict their published standards to satisfy a federal employee.

PAID IS BEST - Standards Are Not Regulations, ASTM Provides Service
From Barbara Schindler, ASTM

Personally, I've been curious about the logic behind why those who are unfamiliar with standards development feel that standards should be free of charge. Is it because standards might be perceived as being regulations or laws developed by the public sector and therefore available free to the public?

I believe that several forces, including budget constraints and less time to be away from the office, have been the inspiration for standards developers like ASTM to implement the latest technology into the standards development process. ASTM was one of the first to institute electronic standards development Forums, whereby technical experts can draft, revise, and comment on standards documents via the internet, without having to meet in person. Even though most of our committees continue to meet twice a year, these Forums have enabled a great deal of work to take place between meetings--addressing another even more important factor in today's standards development environment, speed in responding to industry needs. Forums also facilitate worldwide participation in developing a standard. Then, for the user, having standards available for purchase via the Internet gets the standard into the hands of the user in the time it takes to download the document.

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