• Databases can already now be protected and made available only to qualified users (e.g. SIMBAD). The new legislation would not change that. Currently there is nothing in Astronomy that somebody would want to restrict but can’t because of current legislation.

• The proposed legislation does not force access restrictions. We will be able to continue to provide data access as we do now, unless one of the data suppliers for the current on-line databases decides to change their policy. In many cases this could be circumvented by going back to the original data.