I wonder if British Standards could go the same way...?
Phil
Tony Bryer
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6255321.stm
I think that you have to give HMG quite a lot of credit for making
so much freely available: I used to spend loads of money on
Building Regulations documents of one sort or another. Indeed I
missed the fact that the new Part L Heating Compliance Guide is
available as a free download and paid ＃ for my copy.
It would certainly be nice if BSs were done of the same basis:
they cost serious money even if you are a BSI member like us and
can buy them at half price, because the publication sales have to
finance all the research and committee expenses.
I think though that it is a slightly different issue with things
like OS mapping where the user is making direct commercial use of
it.
--
Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk
rob...@invalid.invalid
wrote:
>On 12 Jan 2007 07:24:57 -0800 Phil wrote :
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6255321.stm
>
>I think that you have to give HMG quite a lot of credit for making
>so much freely available: I used to spend loads of money on
>Building Regulations documents of one sort or another. Indeed I
>missed the fact that the new Part L Heating Compliance Guide is
>available as a free download and paid ŁŁ for my copy.
>
>It would certainly be nice if BSs were done of the same basis:
>they cost serious money even if you are a BSI member like us and
>can buy them at half price, because the publication sales have to
>finance all the research and committee expenses.
>
>I think though that it is a slightly different issue with things
>like OS mapping where the user is making direct commercial use of
>it.
It used to annoy me that HSE charged for many of their publications -
seemd to be contrary to the whole ethos of having a HSE.
Although Building Regs are now downlaodable they often refer to BS
standards which arent free.
Robert
Dave Fawthrop
|On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:31:03 GMT, Tony Bryer <to...@delme.sda.co.uk>
|wrote:
|
|>On 12 Jan 2007 07:24:57 -0800 Phil wrote :
|>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6255321.stm
|>
|>I think that you have to give HMG quite a lot of credit for making
|>so much freely available: I used to spend loads of money on
|>Building Regulations documents of one sort or another. Indeed I
|>missed the fact that the new Part L Heating Compliance Guide is
|>available as a free download and paid ?? for my copy.
|>
|>It would certainly be nice if BSs were done of the same basis:
|>they cost serious money even if you are a BSI member like us and
|>can buy them at half price, because the publication sales have to
|>finance all the research and committee expenses.
|>
|>I think though that it is a slightly different issue with things
|>like OS mapping where the user is making direct commercial use of
|>it.
|
|It used to annoy me that HSE charged for many of their publications -
|seemd to be contrary to the whole ethos of having a HSE.
|
|Although Building Regs are now downlaodable they often refer to BS
|standards which arent free.
Look in the reference section of your Local Central Library Bit of a pain
but still free, except for copying.
--
Dave Fawthrop <dave hyphenologist co uk> Google Groups is IME the *worst*
method of accessing usenet. GG subscribers would be well advised get a
newsreader, say Agent, and a newsserver, say news.individual.net. These
will allow them: to see only *new* posts, a killfile, and other goodies.
cucumber
Dave Fawthrop wrote:
> Look in the reference section of your Local Central Library Bit of a pain
> but still free, except for copying.
Take a half decent digital camera with macro focus to the library :)
Building regs are freely available and rightly so but what's the reason
for BS documents not being free?
Andy Hall
BSI is a commercial organisation, incorporated by Royal Decree.
It does receive government funding towards national standards
activities, but this does not cover all
of the costs of them.
More details at
http://www.dti.gov.uk/innovation/strd/activity/page10714.html
especially in the new MoU document referenced on that page.
It is quite commonplace for standards documents to be chargeable items.
ISO (www.iso.org) charges, as does ANSI (www.ansi.org).
The documents are not cheap but not cheap to produce either.
raden
<philip_b...@yahoo.com> writes
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6255321.stm
>
"It has decided to make access to a database of UK laws completely free
for the public to access and re-use."
I should bloody well think so too
they're our laws
--
geoff
John Stumbles
> Look in the reference section of your Local Central Library Bit of a
> pain but still free, except for copying.
Yours maybe but not ours: they cancelled their subs to the BS. Mind you
we're just a little town out in the boondocks, somewhere between
Maidenhead and Newbury :-)
OG
"Andy Hall" <an...@hall.nospam> wrote in message
news:45a7...@nt1.hall.gl...
> On 2007-01-12 19:39:18 +0000, "cucumber" <spam_f...@yahoo.co.uk> said:
>
>>
>> Dave Fawthrop wrote:
>>
>>> Look in the reference section of your Local Central Library Bit of a
>>> pain
>>> but still free, except for copying.
>>
>>
>> Take a half decent digital camera with macro focus to the library :)
>>
>> Building regs are freely available and rightly so but what's the reason
>> for BS documents not being free?
>
> BSI is a commercial organisation, incorporated by Royal Decree.
>
> It does receive government funding towards national standards activities,
> but this does not cover all
> of the costs of them.
>
> More details at
I think the point of the argument is that this is an anomaly and that
knowledge of such 'standards' (if they are to be applied by statute) should
not be limited to those who are prepared / are required to pay for them.
If standards (like the law) are enforceable, they must be available to all;
not just those who have the ability to pay.
Weatherlawyer
OG wrote:
> "Andy Hall" <an...@hall.nospam> wrote in message
> news:45a7...@nt1.hall.gl...
Didn't one of the Monty Python crew write a film about that sort of
crap?
The theme was that you get penalised for breaking the law but no one
tells you what the law is.
Fair play to the Yanks, they may have voted for a monkey but at least
information paid for by their taxes is freely available to all and
sundry. (Although I gather the Chimp is about to monkey with it.)
If you want the information that the MetO gets your taxes for, you are
better off on a Swiss or German site such as:
http://www.westwind.ch/?link=ukmb,http://www2.wetter3.de/Fax/,.gif,bracknell+00,bracknell+24,bracknell+36,bracknell+48,bracknell+60,bracknell+72,bracknell+84,bracknell+96,bracknell+108,bracknell+120,bracknell+132
And WetterZentrale hosts a page that has archived stuff based on the
above:
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsukmeur.html
I'd be able to find it if we had won the war.
Fk the UK Govt!
BLiarism is Thatcherism without the Poll Tax. He is a greasy AC/DC
whore like the worst of them.
Hugo Nebula
"cucumber" <spam_f...@yahoo.co.uk> randomly hit the keyboard and
produced:
>Dave Fawthrop wrote:
>
>> Look in the reference section of your Local Central Library Bit of a pain
>> but still free, except for copying.
>Take a half decent digital camera with macro focus to the library :)
Or live in Manchester[1], where one can view them online for free via
Manchester's library website.
[1] It's a high price, I know!
>Building regs are freely available and rightly so but what's the reason
>for BS documents not being free?
Because as Tony says, you're not paying for the document, you're
paying for all the research and committees. Much of the Approved
Documents are based on BSs or BR Digests, so I suspect they don't cost
the Government a lot to produce.
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have you strayed?"
Andy Hall
That's a very long piece of string.
In most cases, the standards are *referenced* by the legislation but
are not part of it. Virtually all standards are referenced by one
piece of legislation or another - either directly or indirectly. For
example, manufacturers or importers of many types of goods are required
by law to place the CE mark on them, signifying that they meet all of
the relevant standards for that product. One something like a piece
of IT equipment, this includes standards related to electromagnetic
emissions and susceptibility, safety and so on. On power tools and
machinery there are generic and specific standards and so on.
For many standards there are Euronorm (EN) and then national standards
using them (for example in the UK, prefixed with BS-EN xxxxx). The
whole purpose is to have harmonisation to prevent some countries having
different standards and erecting trade barriers as happened in the
past. The standards documents and the work behind them cost a lot of
money to produce and that has to be found from somewhere. One
couldn't have a situation where the same material is freely available
in one country and has to be purchased in another. Therefore the
practice is that they are generally chargeable items.
So then it comes to the means of funding. In effect there are three
main ways:
- If I am buying a product to which a set of standards apply, the
manufacturers buys the standards, applies them to his product and tests
it before placing it on the market. The cost of this is passed to the
purchasers, in effect. They can elect to trust his integrity in self
certifying his product, or buy the standards, test themselves and so on
at their option. Of course in some critical usage applications this
may happen.
- A similar thing goes for service. If I buy a rewire of my home,
the way that the legislation intends it to happen, I am buying the
expertise that the contractor will do the work in accordance with
BS7671 and be able to certify to that. This would imply that he has
bought and read said document and/or has references to it. Again the
cost of the standards is passed on. Whether all of this happens
correctly and the guy is competent is another matter, but that is the
intent.
- The third way would be for all standards work and publications to be
funded out of taxation. That would need international agreements if
there are harmonised standards. Moreover, it becomes the same
argument of whether or not taxation should cover things that the vast
majority of the population are not likely to use.
For example; if I am a typical homeowner and have an outside contractor
do my wiring, I don't need a copy of BS7671 to check it - it's
pointless anyway because unless I have reasonably detailed
understanding of principles of electricity and engineering thereof, I
wouldn't understand much of it anyway. OTOH, if I am going to DIY
electrical work, I do need to have an understanding of BS7671 in order
to do it properly, which either means buying the standard itself and/or
a very good reference to it. Either way there is a cost and that
should be treated as part of the project.
I don't think it's reasonable for a small minority to expect to get
standards for "free" (but really funded by the taxpayer), when the
majority are not really able to make direct use of their content.
The current system, whereby the user(s) of the standard pay for it
directly or indirectly through purchase of goods and services, seems to
me to be a fair one.
One of the whole points of having standards is one of manufacturers and
suppliers warranting and being able to demonstrate that their products
and services meet defined criteria for safety and operation. The
user/conumer can't possibly expect to have the technical expertise in
all fields to a sufficient degree to make use of all of them.
When it comes to relating the law to all of this; when I buy a product
that the manufacturer has labelled, it is incumbent upon the
manufacturer to comply with the law, not the consumer. The same goes
for the electric wiring example. If as a consumer, I choose to
take on part or all of the role of contractor, then I must expect to
have to apply some or all of the criteria that they have to and to also
cover the costs of that.
Andy Hall
>
>
> Fair play to the Yanks, they may have voted for a monkey but at least
> information paid for by their taxes is freely available to all and
> sundry. (Although I gather the Chimp is about to monkey with it.)
This was specifically about standards, and ANSI standards are chargeable
documents.
>
> If you want the information that the MetO gets your taxes for, you are
> better off on a Swiss or German site such as:
> http://www.westwind.ch/?link=ukmb,http://www2.wetter3.de/Fax/,.gif,bracknell+00,bracknell+24,bracknell+36,bracknell+48,bracknell+60,bracknell+72,bracknell+84,bracknell+96,bracknell+108,bracknell+120,bracknell+132
And
>
> WetterZentrale hosts a page that has archived stuff based on the
> above:
> http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsukmeur.html
This always assumes that the user understands how to read a weather map.
Most people just want to know what the weather will be like for the
next few days
>
> I'd be able to find it if we had won the war.
>
> Fk the UK Govt!
> BLiarism is Thatcherism without the Poll Tax. He is a greasy AC/DC
> whore like the worst of them.
Nothing wrong with Poll Tax of course, as to Mr TB's profile, I
couldn't comment.
Mary Fisher
"John Stumbles" <john.s...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2007.01.13....@ntlworld.com...
Last time I went to ours I copied a lot from my chosen document - with
permission - on the library's copier.
Mary
>
Ed Sirett
I agree. See bottom line of sig, (my small slice of creative anarchy).
--
Ed Sirett - Property maintainer and registered gas fitter.
The FAQ for uk.diy is at http://www.diyfaq.org.uk
Gas fitting FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/GasFitting.html
Sealed CH FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/SealedCH.html
Choosing a Boiler FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/BoilerChoice.html
Gas Fitting Standards Docs here: http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/GasFittingStandards
Tony Bryer
> If standards (like the law) are enforceable, they must be
> available to all; not just those who have the ability to pay.
Well as pointed out before, being able to get Acts of Parliament,
Circulars etc, for free only dates back ten or so years old.