
What if a standards body obeyed Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics? - idiginous
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/04/25/iStandardsBody.html
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serhei
If we're talking about hypothetical, mostly unenforceable principles, maybe
it's the corporations that should follow the Three Laws of Robotics and not
the standards?

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jared314
I'm not sure you can define how a standard can "injure" users.

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jerf
A standard can require the use of patented code, allowing the patent holders
to hold the users hostage. A standard can mandate enormous unnecessary
complexity that benefits large corporations by locking out smaller
competition, which is a loss to the users (who lose out on competition and a
rich market). The text of the standard can be locked behind a paywall, another
way of raising the bar for no good reason. A standard can be written with no
regard for users at all and consequently fail, wasting valuable standards-
writing time (XHTML2). A standard can be written that imposes mandatory DRM,
and I'm yet to see the DRM system that actually benefits a user. And perhaps
most commonly, a standard can be not-written-at-all, locking the user in for
the pleasure of the company (MS Word and friends).

Many of these are often combined.

