Should standards be copyirghted?

Contrary to the article's suggestion, retaining copyright does "prevent bastardization of the standard by someone else who tries to publish a different version of it." One of the exclusive rights of copyright is the right to make derivative works (and to foreclose others from doing so).

The article claims that copyright is "designed to defeat" wide dissemination of standards. The author would be well-advised to reconsider this in light of open-source licenses such as the GPL, which rely on copyright protection to ensure wide dissemination of works through their viral mechanisms.

In the US, documents you write are generally considered copyrighted whether you put a copyright notice on them or not.

If you want to make a document public, it's a pretty good idea to claim the copyright and then release it under a very permissive license.

Having been in attendance at various IETF committee meetings over the years, a standards committee meeting is a meeting that most everyone involved in related areas of nerdery should attend and experience. At least once. But that's another discussion.

Copyrights on standards documents can be permissive or restrictive, and can help or can hinder the acceptance of a standard. This is no different than copyrights explicitly or implicitly present on other documents. Having explicit copyright statements is almost always better than having no explicit copyrights; you know where you stand with respect to the contents of the document.