I am sure this sounds scary and evil from the outside, but it is actually a good system. Standards are living documents, constantly being updated and changed as the science develops. Laws are laws–they are subject to the whim of the public, legislators, funding, and political cycles. I don’t think you would want to live in a world where the engineering you depend upon for safety and life was built on laws alone.
I am working on ASTM and ASABE standards right now and participate in ISO committee work. Industry, academics, and the government (ie taxpayers) spend a lot of money for their technical people to participate in this process (for me about $8K a year, not counting the time I spend that I should be doing my “real” job). Very rarely are standards public-facing; most of the cost is absorbed by people who need them to do business. Also, I think they would be available at your university library–but you probably have to be IN the library to access them.
I feel like this lawsuit is making a mountain out of a molehill: people who want EVERYTHING to be available online, indefinitely, for free, and feel inconvenienced by going to the library. $25-$125 is actually a very small fee for doing business, and is much cheaper than most academic journals and books. If you knew the amount of manpower and expertise that go into developing and testing these standards you would realize this is a tremendous bargain.
