Why do I get the feeling...

[John Rumm]

That the current access methods might vanish shortly? (i.e. nose in the trough while it is still there!)

"Coming soon: BSI Knowledge

After nearly 20 years of service, BSOL will be replaced by BSI Knowledge – the new platform for purchasing, accessing and managing standards.

It combines BSI's comprehensive standards database with new features offering customers greater visibility and control over their subscriptions.

While BSOL subscribers will benefit from the new platform's more intuitive interface, all subscriptions remain the same – custom collections, modules and standards documents can all be accessed through BSI Knowledge.

The migration of BSOL subscriptions to BSI Knowledge will start in September and the process will be led by your BSI account manager. You will continue to have access to BSOL until your account's migration is complete."

[jon]

Why are they not free for use..?

[jon]

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is proud to announce the official launch of the ANSI IBR Portal, an online tool for free, read-only access to voluntary consensus standards that have been incorporated by reference (IBR) into federal laws and regulations.

[Andy Burns]

I've not found too many of the DRM'ed standards yet, but even with the <ahem>methods</ahem> to download PDFs, they do expire.

[Robin]

<snip>

Can you please point us to a "trough" still open to wild boars?

And I've no hope of reversing this trend. BSI need to fill their own trough in order to pay their executives (the CEO over £m1 last year.) And one of my many failures was not getting anyone to take seriously the problem of "tertiary legislation" that is not available to the public free or at modest cost.

[Brian Gaff]

Because its a materiel world. Brian

[John Rumm]

Drop me an email :-)

Yes it is a bit of a sore point - especially as the prices of the docs are all fairly steep, but the quality and quantity of content varies

*dramatically* - if you can't look before buying it would be easy to lash out a few hundred quid on something that was 7 pages of introduction, and a couple of pages of fairly useless content.

[alan_m]

But doesn't the sale of goods act apply - goods not fit for purpose?

[John Rumm]

Tricky one to argue if the doc contains all of the standard - just difficult to know in advance how much of it will be useful or relevant to the questions at hand.

[Robin]

I don't think the SOGA - or the Consumer Rights Act - applies that way. You are buying a copy of a text which has been designated as a British Standard under statutory authority. So long as you can read the text then I don't see you have grounds for rejecting it as "not fit for purpose". If you don't like it then the only avenue I can think of is judicial review.

[Fredxx]

I would have thought Distance Selling Rules might be appropriate?

[Robin]

worth trying but I don't know if BSI ever argue sales of Standards to people like John are not consumer contracts. And of course doesn't apply to downloads.