I was surprised when this was announced and I believe RIPE NCC's legal counsel was and is wrong. It would have been better to advise its members that they need to make sure that they have consent from the folks whose data they've submitted to the RIPE NCC for publication.
I wasn't involved in the development and this is speculation on my part ... but I suspect the policy development came about because some anti-abuse people believe it is wrong for companies to harvest public information for marketing purposes. Therefore, they came up with the blocking idea. Since there was no legitimate reason for blocking access to public information they came up with this privacy law idea. Even though it doesn't apply it sounds good so they just keep repeating over and over that privacy laws are forcing their hand. The report that is supposed to describe the situation is so vague and incomplete that it is impossible to determine how they made their decisions and it does not even identify the legal council that provided the advice: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/groups/tf/dp This stuff happens when abuse issues are treated as a "religion." Thank You