[ CC'ed to the db-wg list since my question and your answer seems to be of interest for more people ] Ambrose, RIPE Database Administration writes:

In particular, the person and role objects will only be available if you agree to follow an acceptable use policy.

...

The text files containing the whole database

ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/ripe.db.gz

and

ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/ripe.db.long.gz

will be removed.

Are you removing the complete files ?!? I would appreciate if you could keep the files but without the person and role objects. This way, I (and probably other people) don't need to change any of my (their) scripts, Thanks in advance, David K. ---