free download of ISO/IEC 10646 (was: Accessing the WG2 document register)

[Andrew West]

On 11 June 2015 at 10:12, Janusz S. Bień <jsbien at mimuw.edu.pl> wrote:
>
>> The latest version of ISO/IEC 10646 is not inaccessible to most
>> people, as it is (and has been since 2006) available for free download
>> from ISO at <http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html>.
>
> The page states clearly
>
>  The following standards are made freely available for standardization
>  purposes.
>
> In consequence I don't feel entitled to download it. Not only my
> curiosity is not a standarization purpose, but even teaching students
> about standards also doesn't qualify. I just show them the link and tell
> them to decide themselves to download or not :-)

I think you are reading far too much into the phrase "for
standardization purposes".  The license states that you are allowed to
store a copy on your personal computer and print off a single copy,
but says nothing about what purposes you may use the standards for.
In my opinion it is ridiculous to claim that you are not entitled to
download the documents.

The Unicode terms of use <http://unicode.org/copyright.html> are far
more restrictive, and state that "Any person is hereby authorized,
without fee, to view, use, reproduce, and distribute all documents and
files solely for informational purposes in the creation of products
supporting the Unicode Standard, subject to the Terms and Conditions
herein."  So if you are not planning to create a product supporting
the Unicode Standard, you are not legally allowed to view or download
any of the files comprising the Unicode Standard !

Andrew