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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

This is an important style but I find this style of journalism infuriating. It's hard to follow because there'll be a bit of information and then a transition into some unrelated background before it (hopefully) circles back to the original point.

It's almost like writing a college paper and having to pad out the word count.

Anyway, I support the straightforward principle that the law isn't the law if it's not accessible to the public.

The only question left is how do you fund standards development if you abolish the model (that predates the Internet) of selling copies. I suspect the answer is going to be different on a case by case basis.

For example, general contractors and tradesmen depending on jurisdiction need to be licensed. A mix of license fees and government funding could pay for building or fire codes.

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"The only question left is how do you fund standards development if you abolish the model (that predates the Internet) of selling copies. I suspect the answer is going to be different on a case by case basis."

Why shouldn't congress pay for the development of the law if they are going to enact the law? I've often thought that is part of the problem. It is too easy for congress to pass laws quickly and without restriction. That is why we have so many laws, it is so easy to pass laws in a reactionary way, and to respond to private interests instead of public interests.

I do think it's important to have laws like building codes, but why shouldn't the development be publicly funded?

Well the people writing them are also receiving a large amount of power when they are working in the law.

The people involved have already spent massive sums on lobbying, and to me this feels like an extension of that lobbying.

You've got the causation backwards. ASTM is an engineering organization like ISO. They develop industry-consensus standards, just like ISO. Their codes didn't get adopted as the standard because they lobbied for them (do you even have any evidence ASTM lobbied to get its standards adopted?). They got adopted because they were the industry standards.

It's like if a law stated that certain government contractors must use ADA or C. They'd refer to the ISO standards for those languages, but nobody could reasonably come along after the fact and say they did so because of lobbying by ISO!

And yet ASTM maintains a Washington, DC, presence, with public policy (a/k/a lobbying) positions.

ASTM Washington Office Jeff Grove, Vice-President, Global Policy and Industry Affairs 202-xxx-xxxx

Anthony Quinn, Director, Public Policy and International Trade 202-xxx-xxxx

http://www.astm.org/CONTACT/headquar.htm

Even if ASTM itself doesn't directly lobby, it's ... delightfully or frighteningly charming, take your pick, that the naive view of an industry organisation not being utilised by its members for their direct benefit through rules-setting wouldn't find itself used to do so. Directly, indirectly, overtly, or otherwise.

Congressional Record lists 188 results for ASTM in Congressional testimony and documents: https://www.congress.gov/search?q=%7B"source"%3A"congrecord"...

Note that ASTM is principally active at city, county, and state levels, for which comparable archives are much less available.

ASTM are documented to have retained a lobbying firm in the UK:

http://whoslobbying.com/uk/astm_international

Sep 2010 - Nov 2010 APCO WORLDWIDE provided UK public affairs consultancy services to ASTM International. [2]

> I do think it's important to have laws like building codes, but why shouldn't the development be publicly funded?

Because building codes are a local issue and local governments have no money?

That's a valid point. But why couldn't all of these local governments get together and collectively come up with the standards. If they can't figure a way to come up with the standards without outsourcing it to a for profit organization, it must not be a very important law.

Think of how corrupt the system could be if a bunch of building material suppliers could write the law. "Buildings must be constructed from brand X materials" Then brand X has a monopoly for the materials. This is similar, only brand X is the only company that can provide you with a copy of the law, a law that you are required to comply with.

> That's a valid point. But why couldn't all of these local governments get together and collectively come up with the standards.

Because these standards are highly technical and local governments lack the expertise.

> If they can't figure a way to come up with the standards without outsourcing it to a for profit organization, it must not be a very important law.

These are non-profit organizations. And the part after the comma does not follow from the part before the comma. It's often very important for things to be done according to accept standards, but the government can recognize that without having the expertise to develop the standards itself.

> Because these standards are highly technical and local governments lack the expertise.

Ok, but why can't the government pay them to develop the standards. Why must the business model be for them do fund the development of the standards after the fact.

I believe it is because the lawmakers do not have to pay for the laws with unpopular taxes, so they defer the fundraising to pay for the laws until after they have enacted the laws. That way they skirt the issue of taxes.

> And the part after the comma does not follow from the part before the comma.

I guess it's just my opinion then. If the lawmakers can't stand by and realize the cost of forming the law while they are passing it, I don't think it is important enough to impose a cost to the citizens to read what the law is.

As a practical matter, its not "citizens" in general who need to reference the building codes, it's builders. They're the ones charged with compliance, and they have to buy copies of the codes as part of their business. Thus, the industry profiting from construction is the one burdened with financing the development of the codes.

It's not the model that maximizes transparency, but it has a sensible logic of its own.

>As a practical matter, its not "citizens" in general who need to reference the building codes, it's builders. They're the ones charged with compliance, and they have to buy copies of the codes as part of their business. Thus, the industry profiting from construction is the one burdened with financing the development of the codes.

That's exactly the model I have a problem with. In my area, it is perfectly legal for me to remodel my house without hiring a 'builder'. But I have to comply with the building codes due to the law. But in order to know what those codes are, I have to pay a third party to access the law. And access isn't cheap. If access to the 'law' is more expensive than the remodel I want to do then I have a problem with the system.

I for one believe that I should have the right to embark on things like building a house without the need to pay a third party for access to access to what amounts to the law.

> It's not the model that maximizes transparency, but it has a sensible logic of its own.

I suppose it comes down to the matter of what you value. I value liberty and government transparency above all special interests. The system as it stands may have some logic, but I believe it is wrong.

The governments are creating a de facto obligation to buy the codes, essentially a pass-through tax.

The funds are present within the community, or they aren't. The mode of allocation presently used is highly inefficient. It's remarkably similar to the shake-down style of government revealed in places such as Ferguson, MO. And many other locations.

Congress already funds the development of the standards, these bodies just continue to profit from them until they are superseded, entirely due to these practices.

This is very much like public funded research, it's funded by taxpayers but not available to them without movements like SciHub liberating the products of said research.

It's a bit of a joke that it's allowed to continue this way for so long in the first place.

> Congress already funds the development of the standards

Source?

https://www.nist.gov/

NIST fully funded development of the building standards at issue?

NIST partially funded building standards: https://www.nist.gov/el/about-el/standards-activities

So EL does some research that UL/ASTM/etc. rely on to develop their standards, and therefore those standards should all be free? By that logic, Google's search algorithms should be made public because it almost certainly relies on some publicly-funded CS research.

If lawmakers required all search engines to use google's algorithm then I say yes. Otherwise to comply with the law you would be required to pay google to give you access to the algorithm.

But then isn't the public funding angle totally irrelevant? Or are you saying that under your hypothetical, where lawmakers required search engines to use Google's algorithm, whether the algorithm should be open depends on whether Google relied on any publicly funded research in developing it? I think the answer is "no"--incorporating it into the law is what justifies requiring it to be open, not the fact it relied on publicly-funded research.

The post I responded to stated:

> Congress already funds the development of the standards, these bodies just continue to profit from them until they are superseded, entirely due to these practices.

Basically, the original poster accused standards organizations of double dipping. I asked for proof, and all I got was a link to an NIST article stating that standards organizations used some of its research in formulating standards. My point is that everybody relies on government research--that doesn't mean the standards were "funded by Congress" in the first place.

I'm being pedantic here, but I think it's important to call out. It's very common in HN for posters to insert random snipes like this without any factual backing, and for people to take such assertions at face value.

Governments delegate rule-making authority, which have the force of law, to these industry organizations. If all laws should be public, these too should be public, regardless of funding model.

Agree, I hate it when I come to the article for information and it starts with "On Monday, X woke up at 7am and had eggs for breakfast". I don't care what X had for breakfast, I came there to know about the lawsuit he's involved in, so give me the lawsuit and let him east the breakfast in privacy!

> The only question left is how do you fund standards development

I think there's an existing model of both government contracting private companies to do things and government allocating grants for private companies to do research, etc. - so either of those can be used for developing standards too, not? The government can also have a continuous financing of certain groups that are tasked with ongoing work on creating/updating standards.

Also, can be financed by involved industry - many industry players are as interested in having good standards as the government is, and are probably very interested in participating in developing those. Isn't that how IETF works?

I really like this style of writing. I find it easier to remember information that is tied to other information. A story written like this makes it much more likely I will have existing knowledge to anchor the knowledge I learn story to.

Another aspect that seems to be glossed over is the "Incorporated By Reference" (IBR). Just as in programming, the fact that I refer to something in a pointer doesn't mean that it remains constant. What prevents the writers of a standard from changing it after a legislative body approves it as IBR? If a standard is determined to be better served by a change (due to safety, correction, or some other metric), does it need to be re-approved by the same legislative body? Or does the legislative body need to be informed of the change, and determine if it needs re-approval?

States generally ratify each revision of the code by updating the law. For example, the NEC is released every three years, and independently adopted by each state: http://www.electricalcodecoalition.org/state-adoptions.aspx

Each state also makes a handful of their own amendments to the code, to account for local conditions and historic practices. An example of a local allowance (although probably informal city jurisdiction rather than statewide) is say allowing a two-family house to have only two electrical meters, rather than requiring an additional one for the "common areas", if it is owner occupied.

I guess technically the NFPA could revise what they publish as the "2014 NEC", creating some legal ambiguity. But in practice they just don't.

I misremembered. I think the requirement for separate electrical service for each residence IS a MA state amendment. And then town inspector's exception was that if something was owner-occupied, the extra common-area meter socket was still required, but installing it and building out the service panel was not.

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