> it is amazing that the appeal opinion requires 40 pages when, in essence, the question is only whether people subject to US laws must pay to know what the law is.
This is actually a tough case. Someone, or some organisation, spent a lot of time and money making a standard and protected it by copyright. They did not ask to be part of a law - that was something the people who made the law decided - and really, the people who made the law should have licensed the standards.
This is mostly false, actually.
They exist as model codes to be a part of building codes in a lot of cases.
They serve no other purposes.
Nobody is sitting around making building codes as a hobby that are accidentally getting incorporated into law.
Additionally, in the case such a thing did happen, the authors would have have recourse - not against the public, but against the government, for a taking.
While I can't cite a source, it also would be very believable to learn that lobbyists from some of the larger standards orgs (the ones that more or less stand alone, like e.g. the NFPA) are encouraging politicians to actually reference "the standard" rather than write "law language" to define something already present in the standard. Potentially with a "back of the mind" thought by the lobbyist of "this will drive more sales for us".
it also would be very believable to learn that lobbyists from some of the larger standards orgs [...]are encouraging politicians to actually reference "the standard
This is true
thought by the lobbyist of "this will drive more sales for us".
This is not. The money just isn't all that much, the industries want standards incorporated into laws to that organizations have one well-tested set of rules to follow across the country, rather than having to follow dozens/hundreds/thousands of variations across various jurisdictions.
This is actually a tough case. Someone, or some organisation, spent a lot of time and money making a standard and protected it by copyright. They did not ask to be part of a law - that was something the people who made the law decided - and really, the people who made the law should have licensed the standards.