LH2
If you're asking "how much?" then I'd prefer not to be explicit as I was simply copied in on the correspondence and not the main addressee. You'll have to take my word that it was not unreasonable. However, no matter how low it is it would still be money out of the personal pocket of the person who's providing a service for free. That's why I was exploring the possibility of getting NATS to fund access not only for drauk but also for anyone else providing a free service.
IO
No one precisely and I have no idea who you mean by "J" unless it's Jeppesen.
At the moment it's an entirely level playing field. Anyone wanting access to raw data to provide a briefing service can get it for a fee. NATS, the airlines, and the commmercial briefing services all pay for access to the data held by EAD. The alternative is to maintain your own database, populated by a feed from the AFTN and subscribing to NOTAM from all of the ICAO States. Until recently that's what NATS did. They've now decided that it is more efficient to share a common European database rather than run their own.
CAA funds NATS to deliver PIB in accordance with the UK's obligations under the Chicago Convention. NATS does it by paying EAD to provide the website that forms the delivery mechanism. CAA in return recovers the costs from en-route charges. The majority of GA pilots don't pay these charges and get the NATS service free. The only real difference betweeen what NATS are doing and what any other briefing service is doing is that NATS are paying EAD to run the NATS website, whereas other commercial briefing services simply pay for access to the data and then run their own websites.
To my mind you cannot create an unfair situation where some users pay for access to the same product and others do not. EAD is a commercial organisation and if you want them to do the job without charging fees then they would need to be funded to do so. It's a little outside AOPA UK's remit to suggest that the governments of the Eurocontrol countries should provide funding to a commercial organisation. It would in any case be a daft idea because it would be practically impossible to prevent commercial concerns outside the funding States from gaining access to what is a worldwide database.
The way to deal with access for "free to user" providers IMHO is for sponsored access with some restrictions. The sort of thing I have in mind is to limit it to European rather than worldwide data, to limit access to providers of free to user services for leisure pilots that are not bundled with any paid-for product, and not to allow the data to be passed on to a third party for re-use. The avenue I'm exploring is for CAA to provide funding to allow NATS to sponsor access.
This is a long and carefully thought out reply to a simple question. I hope it illustrates to you that apparently simple ideas end up requiring a lot of careful consideration.