EMBOSS+SwissProt+Prosite on public server, problem ???

[José R. Valverde]

Methinks that SP people started by relying on good faith for
commercial users who were expected to abide by the license and
now suspect very high levels of "piracy" through the public
servers.

As for the logs.. that's a tough one, because it will reveal
information about users, and NOW we are required (in EU at least)
to protect it (unless users agree first). Again, this was not
a real concern when SP started their licensing, since law was fuzzy,
and no one knew what to do, but things are different now.

So, logs are probably out of question unless all accesses logged
required PREVIOUSLY an explicit acceptance from users of such
log disposal/redistribution to SP.

An alternative that wouldn't reveal much user data would be to
pick up connecting site names and send a list to SP people. But
I can't be sure it would be legal either.

The problem, as I see it, is that by producing those old logs now,
we may be breaking the law. OTOH, if SP suspects unlawful conduct
from companies, they must first try to get an injunction to request
the logs. But we are speaking of international law here, and that
is costly.

To be fair, SP guys are our friends, we are as interested as them
in their success, we NEED them, as much as they need us, and we
don't want to make things difficult for them. But we can't break
the law either.

So, what I would suggest is this:

	I suppose that if SP didn't bring this up earlier, it's
because it wasn't a problem from them, it's now that they are
concerned.

	So, from now on, we may do like with GCG, i.e. either
only give access to academic users or shield access behind an
online licensing screen which displays SwissProt License, states
clearly that logs MAY be sent to them and requires acceptance before
granting access.

	Then, from now on, we would all be on the safe side and ready
to cooperate and profit mutually.

Speaking of me: while I had registered commercial users, I kept both
the latest release and the latest _free_ release, and produced a note
stating that commercial users needed a license. But I never required
them to state their acceptance to me, nor to agree on my giving away
any of their data. I guess I can't produce logs now. But I willfully 
could do it in the future if SP guys feel it will help them, by 
modifying the access procedures.

				j