[michaelwilson]

As I recall, with the Hubble, and presumably the JWST, there were scientific "precedence" rules which limited access to the observational data to the scientist requesting the observation for some period of time.

This was to prevent others from also getting the data and publishing before the requesting scientist.

Assuming this continues to be true, they probably wouldn't want to handle the data by publishing it to a FTP server immediately on receipt.