[nologic01]

There is a serious cottage industry around standards (not just ISO). Selling the standards themselves is part of an overall architecture for selling "certification" of compliance with the standards and ancillary consulting and training services and, in some instances, selling standard-compliant solutions.

While obviously standards don't have virgin birth (some costs are involved) it does smack as rent extraction: By definition there is only one standard so you can't ask for competitive pressures to lower the price.