I was always curious why adopted standards like the NEC with the force of law could be copyrighted.
The level of research and feedback from the field that is needed to craft the NEC is beyond the capacity of all but maybe the very largest jurisdictions. There's also the benefit of uniformity (for most of it, even as local jurisdictions sometimes have variations).
So the model of having each local jurisdiction write their own is not practical. That leaves a common entity to do so. The choices then are to have the federal government do it or a private corporation (which is also what you'd have if the many local jurisdictions just formed their own shared entity to do it).
Either way, the process of crafting the code is very expensive. It has to be paid for by some means. These options would include federal taxes (if the fed did it), jurisdiction contribution (hard to enforce), or supplementary payment in approximate proportion to use (e.g. pay to get a copy of the code). As long as the payment for the code is kept reasonable I'm all for the latter.
I believe it is reasonable in the case of the NEC. That doesn't mean some future abuse by the NFPA isn't possible. I would like to see some better processes, such as a means to make emergency changes. But even this can be handled at the local level if needed.
