Any copyright on the database would have a highly counterproductive effect since it might well stop people from contributing info for it. Within germany the database holding information on routing, network and people information is currently not copyrighted, but kept confidential only for network administrators, because just a few people voted that the X.121 addresses of their routers should be confidential. I'm not aware of the presence of X.121 addresses in the RIPE database. And if people want to keep that information secret, they just shouldn't include it in submissions for the RIPE database. If there is any need for confidential or copyrighted kind of data, try to keep it to a minimum and separate it from the other data, so that it don't suck up the whole database into confidential or copyrighted state (like in germany). The RIPE database should be considered public, therefore confidential information simply doesn't belong in it. Any local, regional, national or whatever database may contain items with confidential information, but those items can simply be filtered out when data are forwarded for inclusion in the RIPE database. Piet