Assuming that you did not do your CADD work yourself and used a CADD
operator, would such a CADD operator work for you for free? I doubt it.
In a similar manner, while the technical content of the codes are done by
volunteers that participate for free (although some code committees do
reimburse for some travel expenses...I believe that AISC does), the fact
still remains that the actual document is still put together (i.e.
editted, "layed out" in a page layout publication, etc by paid staff at
organizations. In addition, like it or not, for many of these
organizations, the codes are one of their major sources of income that
allows those organizations to function (the other main source typically is
membership dues...but how many people here are members of various
organizations).
I will use the example that I have used in the past. Considering that it
likely costs you less than a dollar a drawing to print a those drawings
for a client, if you are so convinced that various organizations should
pass on such costs to you to use their intellectual property, why should
use expect a client to pay you significantly more than something less than
a dollar per page of your drawings? And considering it would cost you
even less to PDF those drawings, why would should a client pay you even
than much? The point is that you are not paying for a stack of papers
glued together...if that were the case, then I could go to my local
Staples and buy a stack of paper to sell you for $100. You are paying for
the intellectual property that in contains on those sheets of paper. And
no matter how those organizations created that intellectual property (i.e.
whether it cost them money or not), they are entitle to compensation for
it and have every right to charge what they want.
If you don't like it, then write your own code and get the local
jurisdiction (and others) to adopt it. ;-) To be more serious, it costs
money to produce a code, whether there are volunteers doing it or not. If
you think the free NEHRP provisions cost nothing to produce, then you are
extremely naive at best but maybe delusional. It just so happens that you
don't "see" that cost as it is paid for by making use of tax dollars.
As to your question about the errata, I don't know for sure. If it is
purely an editorial correction/change (i.e. does not change the meaning),
then I would assume that no action is required for it to be "officially"
used. If not (i.e. it does change the meaning), then I would suppose it
is dependent on how each jurisdiction considers it unless there is some
established principle. It is possible that if it fixes something that was
a typo even if it does change the meaning, then it may not need to be
approved as the code committee intended it to be are the errata is showing
it rather than what the typo showed. If the change is to fix something
that the code committee screwed up (i.e. they made a technical mistake),
then I believe that is not typically considered an errata item but rather
a change that needs to be made through the formal code process. Errata is
supposed to only be things that did not make it in the final "printing"
(either hard copy or electronic copy) as was intended, voted upon and
approved by the committee.
Regards,
Scott
Adrian, MI
On Fri, 8 Jun 2007, David Merrick wrote:
> Are errata lists part of the code? Are they being adopted by the local
> governing jurisdictions? How does errata become law, like the code?
>
> If volunteers write the code, why are hundreds of dollars of fees being
> charged for even down-loading it's electronic file? (no printing costs).
> Each errata could be a complete recopy of the whole code with the
> changed print red-lined dated and with approval identification. I could
> understand paying about $10 for the the cost of a web site.
>
> The authors and web sites for the errata get more recognition than the
> volunteers writing the code.
>
> David Merrick, SE
>
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