Free ASTM Standards? Recent Court Ruling making their standards free?

gpainter

Quite Involved in Discussions
As i was driving back from Boston, I public radio station had a person that was posting ASTM standards free. He notified ASTM that he was doing this because the standards were referenced in public law they are free according to a recent court ruling. Did anyone else hear this and get his website?
 

gpainter

Quite Involved in Discussions
No , I do not other than it was Friday afternoon. They are posting 70-80 that are referenced by public law.
 

Marc

Fully vaccinated are you?
Leader
If you remember the time on Friday, we should be able to get a listing of programs and know which one it was in. I only bring this up because we should be able to go to the PBS site and replay the program.
 

Wes Bucey

Prophet of Profit
If you remember the time on Friday, we should be able to get a listing of programs and know which one it was in. I only bring this up because we should be able to go to the PBS site and replay the program.
I think you mean NPR [radio], not PBS [TV],but even then, individual public radio stations buy syndicated programs from other sources like PRI and PRX, as well as produce local programming aired only on a single station.

The more sure way is to check for the local public radio stations operating in the markets where OP was driving and check THEIR websites for what they aired.

College-sponsored stations, in particular, produce a lot of their own stuff.
 

Mikishots

Trusted Information Resource
As i was driving back from Boston, I public radio station had a person that was posting ASTM standards free. He notified ASTM that he was doing this because the standards were referenced in public law they are free according to a recent court ruling. Did anyone else hear this and get his website?

Yikes, that would be a huge story. ASTM is non-profit, but they derive about 3/4 of their revenue from sales of publications. This would also say goodbye to membership fees they collect.
 

Wes Bucey

Prophet of Profit
I did a little legal research and can find nothing remotely resembling a precedent-setting case involving free access to ANY Standards, let alone ASTM Standards.

I suspect someone has made his own interpretation of a case that has nothing to do with free access to ASTM Standards and is acting on that interpretation.

From time to time, individuals come up with "novel" interpretations of laws and some of them are even able to convince others to act on these bogus interpretations. The most notorious of these "interpretations" are associated with protesters against United States income taxes, basing their refusal to pay taxes on spurious interpretations [out of context] of phrases in the U. S. Constitution and various federal, state, and local statutes.

There are a lot of folks serving time in federal prison for acting on these erroneous interpretations.

Here are three links about such misguided actions:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertw...f-wesley-snipes-skip-tax-protester-arguments/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_arguments
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/19/us-snipes-idUSTRE6AI42J20101119
 

Sam Lazzara

Trusted Information Resource
Perhaps this is what you are speaking about?

The person interviewed is working towards getting all standards that are incorporated by reference into federal law to be available to the public for free.
www .onthemedia. org/ blogs/on-the-media/2012/apr/13/carl-malamuds-box-goodies/ - DEAD (404) LINK UNLINKED
 
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Wes Bucey

Prophet of Profit
Perhaps this is what you are speaking about?

The person interviewed is working towards getting all standards that are incorporated by reference into federal law to be available to the public for free.
www. onthemedia .org/ blogs/on-the-media/2012/apr/13/carl-malamuds-box-goodies/ - DEAD (404) LINK UNLINKED
Many Cove readers recall a time when "Military Standards" were free and were incorporated by reference into many other documents by reference, regardless if those documents were public or private. Somewhere along the line, the U.S. Government decided to go out of the printing business and decided that "off-the-shelf" products and Standards for everything from raw materials to finished goods and Quality Management Systems and inspection systems were "good enough" and didn't need to be duplicated by the government.

Apparently, this guy has chosen to ignore the entire flapdoodle that surrounded that government action and has decided to right what he sees as a wrong.

Apparently, he's pugnacious enough to invite a copyright suit, but smart copyright holders won't bother because he is NOT selling these copies for profit, but giving them away. When his money runs out, so will his effort. If he chooses to extend the number of copies by soliciting payment or donations,THEN the copyright holders can make life EXPENSIVE by taking him to court. If he tries to publish them on the web, a quick complaint to the ISPwill shut him dow (even freethinkers here at the Cove know better than to try to circumvent copyright by posting complete copies of copyrighted documents without specific written permission (verbal permission is not enough to protect from a lawsuit at a later date [when a new executive takes the place of the one who gave verbal permission.] The government will NOT join in the suit on either side.

I note he mentions NIST, which still provides lots of free stuff, all copyright free.
 
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