You could also say it's a sham to have non-public standards

In general terms, it is a shame that thousands of ISO, IEC etc specifications and documents are behind a paywall.

I'm surprised there hasn't been a Z-Lib/Anna's like movement for spec documents. Given how tech savvy the default audience of those documents are.

For many relevant specs you can find "draft versions" that are essentially the final version without the official stamp on the open web so there isn't that much of a need.

I mean anna's have most specs and if you know where to look there are IPFS and torrent sources for large portions of entire spec libraries.

Yes! The paywalled SQL documents are a big annoyance

IIRC it doesn't have a freely available "Final" spec. The Final Draft is available for free.