Since my Narten number has been rather low of late, and since
this should be of wide interest and is directly relevant to the
IETF's functions, and
since I had not heard of it previously, I thought I would distribute
this.
I also thought that people would like the reasoning behind this
decision.
Regards (& Happy Holidays to all)
Marshall Eubanks
http://www.dailypayload.com/2006/1221.html
ITU to Distribute Standards Free of Charge
December 21, 2006
Many people in the telecommunication industry have pressed for the
ITU to make its standards documents available free of charge. Well,
the long wait is over. Starting January 2, 2007 the ITU will make its
standards documents available to the public free of charge.
The same kind of change in policy took place at ETSI several years
ago. Reportedly, making its standards available for free did not have
a negative impact on ETSI's bottom line. Rather, the free standards
helped to drive participation in the standards-making body, thus
compensating for any loss in revenue.This move came after a very long
trial wherein the ITU allowed a person to register an e-mail address
and download three documents free. This trial demonstrated
conclusively that there was a strong desire to receive standards at
no cost.
Since the ITU publishes some documents jointly with ISO, special
consideration will be given to those "common" texts, since ISO still
charges for its standards and is apparently heavily dependent on the
revenue from the sales of its standards. For such "common" texts for
which ISO charges a fee, the ITU will not release documents free of
charge until they are at least one year old.
Documents will be made available in PDF format, downloadable directly
from the ITU web site.
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