Hacker in Law (bablaw blogger) posted an open letter to the President in defense of freedom of technical standards and regulations

As LiveJournal has a blog bablaw , which the author also calls himself the pseudonym Hacker in Law. This is one of the most quoted LiveJournal bloggers on Habrahabr; Yes, I myself referred to him yesterday again.

And yesterday, this blogger posted an open letter addressed to President Medvedev. I must say that like any letter that is written from lawyer to lawyer, it is replete with legal vocabulary; perhaps for readers of Habrahabr it will be much clearer to retell the essence of the matter , compiled by Nesterovich.

What do we see in essence? -we are faced with an attempt by Rostekhregulirovanie (the former Gosstandart) to transfer state technical regulations from the public domain to the intellectual property of individual organizations (perhaps even foreign ones). The taxpayers ’funds for which the creators of GOSTs existed and for which a thick bump is transferred to public property are not simply scammed; moreover, now ordinary people are beginning to face a new danger, for example, living in such houses and flying in such planes, which are built according to outdated "pirate" copies of standards and regulations, or even with disdain for them.

The attempt is not new; however, the last time (as Nesterovich points out) the state standardizers lost the case when they were sued by representatives of the St. Petersburg non-profit organization (Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information). Nevertheless, the court decision on the free publication of GOSTs on the Internet has not been executed, and the director of the IRSI was even attacked by unknown persons at his own entrance, ending in a head injury. Now a new attempt is being made to grab standards, under the auspices of President Medvedev personally.

The fourth part of the Civil Code was criticized a lot and deservedly, but nevertheless it contained article 1259 ,according to which official documents of state bodies, official documents of international organizations, as well as their official translations are not subject to copyright (and, therefore, cannot be such a subject of licensing agreements with foreign copyright holders, as their new bill does). Now, not only does a certain part of the legislation turn out, as a result of all this, to be available to citizens only for money; apparently, the road will open to increase this part. But the transfer of the text of laws to the raking paws of traffickers (especially international ones) should be as forbidden as the corporatization of the Ministry of Finance or the anti-drug service, for example.

Events are unfolding very quickly: the bill on the privatization of GOSTs passed the first reading in the State Duma, and last night (in emergency mode, after the end of the working day) was recommended by the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship for submission to the Council of the State Duma. Today, the Council of the Duma will decide to recommend this bill for adoption, and tomorrow (December 23) it will vote in the second and third reading immediately by a majority vote. This once again proves how active, how obedient, how quickly the Duma serves as the legislative stamp of the President’s will.

An open letter, therefore, calls on Medvedev to reconsider his decision and shorten the legal traders. Concerned citizens have placedin the blog to Medvedev mention of an open letter; I believe that it is interesting to bring this story to the main page of Habrahabr.

Here is a vowel struggle for their rights, here is a truly civil society.