Flaws of the standards-making process of the IEEE and related impact on lightning protection standards

The introduction of the Collection Volume Method/Eriksson´s Model (CVM) in IEEE Standard 998 has been a major cause of concern to the lightning protection community because of both the hazard posed by the CVM and its technical invalidity. During July 2013, this led to legal action in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada. The related investigations revealed the root cause of the problem: since 1998, the administrators of the IEEE handed control over its standards to IEEE-SA, which is a separate entity that is controlled by the giant for-profit corporations of the electronic and electrical industries. IEEE-SA created a system in which 98% of members of the IEEE have no say regarding whether a document should be designated a standard of their Institute, non-members of the IEEE have been given a say regarding whether a document should be designated a standard of the IEEE, and those given voting rights acquired these by paying fees and without any requirement regarding competence in the subject matter. The above system was apparently created to serve the monopolistic objectives of big for-profit corporations, it rests on eliminating technical merit as the determining factor, and it created a vote-for-sale system that allows any proponent with deep pockets to control the outcome of the process.