In the months that followed, three rival firms in her city issued recalls due to faulty cable installations. In each case, an engineer had used a “free” copy of a critical standard, altered by bad actors. Priya’s project, however, passed every audit.

Her phone rang. It was the client. "Priya, just confirming – you’ll use the IEC 60502-2 values for the short-circuit temperature limits? We had a failure in 2022 because a contractor used a pirated standard that listed the wrong copper annealing point."

Her first instinct was innocent enough. She opened her browser and typed, with the desperate rhythm of the overworked: "Iec 60502-2 Pdf Free Download"

She opened the PDF. The first page looked perfect: the official IEC header, the copyright notice, the scope section. But as she scrolled to Clause 5 – Rated voltages and test voltages – the numbers shifted. A table listed the DC test voltage for 18/30 kV cables as for 15 minutes. Her memory prickled. The correct value, from her faded printed copy of the 2005 edition, was 72 kV .