Looking at the class action lawsuit by academic peer reviewers claiming publishers constitute an illegal cartel that is misappropriating funding to their research, I am wondering whether #standards professionals could mount a similar action against ISO et al for diverting payment for their work exclusively to standards publishing.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/academic-publishers-face-class-action-over-peer-review-pay-other-restrictions-2024-09-13/

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/lbpglkzeyvq/Uddin%20v%20ELSEVIER%2020240912.pdf

Given so much money is now leaving Europe in the form of payments for IP, maybe it's time to tax that value chain like other goods are subject to VAT? I propose a new EU-wide Valuable Intellectual Property tax (VIP) on all royalties and fees received for patents, copyrights, trademarks and similar, offsetable against royalties paid and also offsetable against corporation tax paid within the EU.

@StillIRise1963
I only follow corporate media to know my enemy.
For example, just now #CNN gave a calm, sympathetic accounting of Project 2025 as some kind of reasonable, modest proposal. And I use #ModestProposal in the literary sense.

Y'know we could avoid a lot of this 2038 nonsense if we just reset the epoch to be 00:00:00 January 1st 2000