Publicly Unavailable Standard (PUS)

David A. Wheeler

2025-09-19

For purposes of this document, a "Publicly Unavailable Standard" (PUS) is a specification or standard that can't be viewed and applied, freely and immediately, by anyone using the Internet and a URL. Typically these viewing and application failures occur because there's a required fee to view it, or it requires registration for access, or it requires a fee to apply it, or it requires special extraction tools or formats (so it can't be viewed on the mobile devices used by many). This is in contrast with a "Freely Available Specification" or "Freely Available Standard" (FAS). For purposes of this document, a FAS is a specification or standard that can be viewed and applied, freely and immediately, by anyone using the Internet and a URL, without restrictions like fees or registration or special extraction tools or special formats. You'll also see the term "Free standard" or "libre standard" or "public standard" in use.

Historically standardization processes required people to accept PUSs, even though they were never desirable. That's because, in the 1950s and earlier, distribution of standards required the use of a printing press and experienced people to set the type. Old standards organizations like ISO and IEC long predate the Internet, and they needed this mechanism. However, things have changed. We now we have the Internet which can freely distribute standards information. Yet many still permit legacy pre-Internet processes that still release PUS.

Many standards bodies already exclusively release FASs as defined here. That is, many standards bodies already always release standards that are available to all without fees, registrations, or other restrictions. Examples of such standards bodies include the IETF (who define the internet standards), OASIS, W3C, and many more. All significant standards bodies at least sometimes release freely available standards.

Unfortunately, some organizations still sometimes use a legacy process and will at least sometimes release a PUS. That's a serious problem, since that means most people who ideally would use that standard cannot practically read or use them. If there was only one standard, it wouldn't be so bad, but modern society requires an endless number of standards.

What's worse, PUS use tends to spread. One PUS is rarely enough, because a PUS usually cites other PUSs, which then cite other PUSs. These create a web of PUSs, each of which typically costs over 100 dollars or 100 Euros. This PUS web ensures that most potential users cannot afford to see or use standards that apply to them. PUS tends to create two worlds, a small "haves" world who can see the PUS, and a much larger group who effectively cannot. Some in that second group can cope by disobeying copyright law. However, requiring people to disobey the law is not something anyone should condone. The rule of law is important.

Some ask "how can you fund standardization?" - a question I find amusing. This is a solved problem, and it was solved decades ago. Many standards bodies like the IETF have been exclusively developing successful standards for many decades without any of those standards requiring the release of PUS. In fact, as I noted, all standards bodies freely release some standards. Also, PUS requires a host of unique expensive tasks, e.g., special systems to that ensure only authorized users can read the standards, special systems to track people's licenses for authorization, lawyers and lawsuits to sue people who read or share standards without authorization, and so on. Note that most of the people who actually write the standards are not paid by the standards bodies who gather the fees, so standards development is often already paid for by other means and not by PUS fees. It's true some standards organizations have not modernized, but it's past time. PUS is not required for standards, and PUS inhibits the use of standards. Governments and large organizations already pay for the real work to develop standards in most cases; they shouldn't need to pay multiple times.

In addition, standards and specifications are basically laws in modern society. I believe laws should not be secret and visible only to those who have the money to afford to read the law. In fact, I think most citizens in democracies believe that the laws that people are subject to should be available to all, without requiring payment to see them. There's long been a tension about standards bodies who create gated laws versus the increasing view in today's democracies that gated laws are not acceptable. One modern dodge is saying that a standard is "voluntary", but this is a dubious claim when in practice standards are often the primary way conformity to a law or regulation must be demonstrated. Democracies should be wary of laws and quasi-laws that are not freely available to all. This is increasingly happening:

In the US, in American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), et al. v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc. (PRO), 82 F.4th 1262 (D.C. Cir. 2023), "the plaintiffs, ASTM, National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), are standards development organizations... [and] often become legally binding when incorporated by reference into federal regulations. However, they are not always easily accessible by the public... the DC Circuit’s recent opinion ultimately affirmed that PRO’s posting of standards incorporated by reference into law constituted fair use. as noted by the US Copyright office, "The court held that non-commercial dissemination of technical standards incorporated by reference into law was fair use." Note that the court didn't say there was no copyright, but instead, that copyright was trumped by societal needs and the different use a document undergoes when a standard is referenced by a law or regulation.
In the EU, the "Malamud ruling" by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) stemmed from similar concerns. "The plaintiffs had demanded that harmonised standards in the EU Official Journal must be freely accessible at no cost as part of EU law. The ECJ upheld this claim on 5 March 2024: 'Every EU citizen and every natural or legal person must be granted access to documents held by the EU Commission. In the case in question, the requested documents form part of EU law, as the EU Commission has given them legal effect by publishing them in the EU Official Journal.'"

I should note that many use the term "publicly available standard" to mean a freely available standard. Even ISO once used a URL containing the term PubliclyAvailableStandards to refer to standards that were available at no charge. Since PAS often does mean freely available, I think that PUS is a fair term for its opposite.

Being freely available is part of being an open standard - Weir defines that as 1) freely available, 2) developed in an open process, and 3) freely implementable, e.g., is royalty free. As a practical matter, a standard that's not freely available means that many people cannot use it.

I'm very pro-standards. Standards are critically necessary for today's modern world. We need standards organizations like ISO and IETF. We should profusely thank the many standards organizations and the people in them, throughout the world, for the hard work they've done that's been important for modern society. We should especially thank organizations like the IETF who have already transitioned to more modern PUS-free processes. If I must work with PUS for some reason, I'll do so, and I do my best to obey laws and guidance when doing so. More generally, I try to obey whatever laws are in place, as well as whatever rules are in place in that organization when I work with them, and I believe others should do the same. I completely understand that many things can't be fixed instantaneously.

However, that doesn't mean we need to stay forever with obsolete processes that hold back progress and create serious societal problems. In the long term we need to help these important organizations learn to finally adapt to the presence of the Internet. Standards today are held back by PUS. We now have an Internet. We don't need any more PUS.

Feel free to see my home page at https://dwheeler.com.