Thanks for all these details and for providing this service to the research community.
It would be nice if you could make it more clear on the website what does “not blanket prohibited” mean in practice: a few specific examples of what you are allowed to do without extra permissions, and what you can expect to get permission for almost automatically.
Even if you simplify and clarify the process, I would still recommend to make selected data sets or collections accessible much more easily, as it would make it faster and simpler for people to get started. They would have some data to work with until they are waiting to get access. This is the approach used by most other repositories, such as TCIA, MorphoSource, and all the data warehouses of 3D models, images, etc.