it'd be interesting to see how many people have actually been prosecuted, however. I'm betting not many. Also, how does the law work when it's legally a corporate entity making the copyright claim? Anyone know?

No, they wouldn't - many places have similar questionnaires, although they cannot *legally* force you to answer any questions on it, and in principal aren't allowed to discriminate and it's 'entirely voluntary'. That said, leave half the questions blank, and see how far you get. These aren't disreputable companies either; on the standard employment for for an Environment Agency job, I was asked about my sexual preferences and briefly about my medical history. And most employment forms have a 'religion' section, they just add a 'rather not say'.

whilst it's always good to see genuinely open formats in use, isn't there already an ISO standard document format? If there is, is it better to use the ISO standard or an open standard?

Why do this? What possible advantage is there? It seems like a completely gratuitous database. Besides which, when I was at college (in the UK age 16-18 normally) they didn't take register - If you didn't turn up, that was your own problem; the lecturers took it up with you when you finally did turn up for class.