Do we really know what the RARE CoA really mean by this question? What are the issues we/they need to resolve? I attended a workshop here in Sweden on teh proposal from the CEC on "Databases protection". Apart from the fact that there were no concrete resultes, the findings were interesting: - are we protecting the data or the sourcecode? - are we protecting the work to gather the info and present it in a new medium and collection? - The added value? - there are normal legal protection for publizised material under most Europena laws already. books,m usic et c. The need for protection of a database is in my opinion to protect an investment in work effort or "value" - maps or other hard work against replication and "resell". The question is what the purpose is for the RIPE database? To support network operations and contacts! Maybe the right to use this databse should be granted to a membership? "Internet Society?" The rules for usage could then be limited to support networking contacts, but take away marketing and such things. --mats