If a standards organization wants their standard to be enforced by the government, they must accept that they will lose the copyright. At least on the portion of the standard that is incorporated into enforceable laws or regulations.
If they are writing something to make money on the copyright, perhaps they should be writing novels or textbooks.
I strongly suspect those organizations could continue to prosper without retaining copyright on such specifications, or if they had to provide a transferable license on that copyright for the portions incorporated into law. There are plenty of ways to profit from intellectual property even when you don't have complete control over its distribution.
I am in general inclined to defend intellectual property, within limits (I'm no fan of the ridiculous US copyright terms, for example), but I don't see this reduction in IP rights as an existential danger to specification-promulgating organizations.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
