More than a decade of evidence flows neg. AND government standards aren’t key.

David Halperin, “Congress Should Reject Bill To Let Private Groups Control Access To U.S. Laws,” Republic Report, https://www.republicreport.org/2024/congress-should-reject-bill-to-let-private-groups-control-access-to-u-s-laws/

The “reading room” rationing of law is unnecessary

Not only is the reading room approach grossly inadequate, it’s also completely unnecessary. The PRO Codes Act, justified by its advocates as a way to preserve revenues for SDOs, is, in fact, aimed at a non-existent problem. The standards organizations had more than a decade in the federal court litigation to demonstrate that they have suffered financially from Public Resource posting the standards. They never did.

Many entities also have continued to buy standards from SDOs, even if Public Resource has posted them online. That’s not surprising. Some people want the physical book, or a version packaged by the original publisher. Many texts that are found for free online still have a big market for private sellers of print books – start with the Bible, or the works of Shakespeare.

One specific reason why SDOs can still make big money selling standards, as the D.C.Circuit noted, is that the standards that become law have often, by the time they are incorporated into law, been superseded by the newest SDO-published versions of the standards, and those are the ones that dominate sales at any given time.

The SDOs also bring in revenue from selling manuals and other explanatory materials and holding training sessions — and from selling the many standards that are not incorporated into law.