Copyright hurts standards leadership.
Samuelson 07 – Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, former Professor at Harvard University, J.D. from Yale University.
Pamela Samuelson, “Questioning Copyright in Standards,” University of California, Berkeley, https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/BC%20questioning%20standards.pdf
Sixth, copyrighting standards may create perverse incentives causing SSOs to invest in persuading governments to mandate use of their standards.163 Veeck illustrates this temptation. Under the deal SBCCI offered, local governments such as Anna and Savoy got royalty-free rights to use the Code and one or more copies to make available in a public office. 164 But SBCC charged anyone else who wanted a copy of the code or access to it a substantial fee, and got referrals from building inspectors and other public officials, making public employees into a kind of free sales force for SBCCI. 165 The perverse incentives problem is of particular concern because of the increasing frequency with which governments are actively encouraging government adoption of privately drafted industry standards. 166
The long-term credibility of SSOs depends not only on their being able to produce sound standards, but also on producing standards in which the SSOs do not have such a strong financial interest that they succumb to the temptation to abuse the standards process by making its standards into a cash cow that must be purchased by anyone affected by the standard.167