Ah yes, the Blu-ray Disc Association, 170 members or so. One can only be puzzled by how so many people can agree on something that seems so silly.
Although if I try hard, I can see it from their perspective too.
The ridiculous thing about the fees are that they are so high.
For the big companies it's nothing, but the indie software developer can't possible pay that amount.
The fee, however, is only for those who wants to put the Blu-ray logo in their creations and on their products.
For example, my Dune HD Smart D1 plays Blu-rays just fine. I'm using it as a test device for 8bit Stories because I can just copy my JAR to the harddisk and run it, thus saving me money for not having to burn discs.
But there's no Blu-ray logo on this device. Instead they put the Java logo on there. I bet they haven't payed any fees. :-)
But I also have to admit, that among all the players I have tested, the Dune HD Smart D1 is the only one that flickers the screen a bit when running my Xlet. In other words, it does not behave like other players. And this is of course one of those things the Blu-ray Disc Association wants to avoid, because if it had the Blu-ray logo then people would go "Eew, what a crappy format with all of this flickering".
So I understand why they'll want a fee for testing devices to make sure they work as they should. And it makes sense that discs has to go through a test too before they can have the Blu-ray logo on them.
But indie software developers don't have to care about that - which of course is also why VLC and Kodi are getting BD-J playback support now.