On Wed, 19 Aug 92 19:56:20 +0200 you said:

The RARE Executive is currently conducting research into "ownership" issues of the RIPE Network Management Database. This research has been requested by the RARE CoA. The NCC has been asked to help with the research. From my personal experience this has two parts:

- preventing abuse of the database

I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about the database to see what kind of abuses might take place. Well, companies might compile a list of networkers for targetting advertisments but I don't think this would warrant special precautions. What do they do in the US with their comparable data ?

- ownership of a collection of data made by collaborative effort which is not quite a "collaborative work"

If there is an owner this must be RIPE since I assume the data is submitted to RIPE on a non-exclusive basis by the NIC/NOCs. However, I strongly believe that except if potential abuses can be identified the database should be public. If somehow the database becomes protected there may arise a market for 'illegal' copies which quite likely would soon be outdated. As long at the original version is always accessible the risk or people floating incorrect information will be smaller. Btw. the BITEARN NODES table which also contains routing and personal information has always been public.

Of course when formalising this the issue of data protection legislation regularly pops up as well.

Perhaps it would be worth while to check the Dutch legislation on any possibly needed procedures. Checking all European legislation on rules for directories and databases is a major project which as far as I understand has not been undertaken by our community. I think this is way beyond what RIPE should get into, but perhaps COSINE should have done it or it could become a RARE project. Regards/ Frode