[JdeBP]

Aside from the fact that you are conflating copyright with price, note that many standards organizations charge money for copies of their standards documents.

ISO charges roughly 20 times the price of a paperback book for a 33 page document. You can buy BS/ISO 8601-1:2019 from the BSI for an even more exorbitant £246. Standards Australia will sell the older 2007 version to you for a mere AUD165.

But this is not special. All standards documents cost money from these organizations, from dates and times to electrical plugs. Treasure the fact that you can (for example) get (some) ECMA standards from ECMA for free. It isn't the norm.

[mercurywells]

IEEE publishes several standards for free via their IEEE Get Program