Time to drop something which is only used by 4 people It is not only used by 4 people, it's used by 4 *services*.
Perhaps wrong choice of terminology and should have been services | subscribers, but you knew what I meant ;)
Basically the proxy service is the feature that a few services (those 4) can add a field to the request that specifies that they query the database on behalf of an end-user and they provide that end-user's IP address in the request so that the RIPE Whois server can apply rate limits to that end-user.
Yes, I'm (after the start of the discussion) aware of what it is and how it works ...
To give an example: one of them is at http://www.geektools.com/whois.php.
And I'm so glad to be (as a paying RIPE member, and as an ICANN accredited domain registrar running whois servers) funding their business model of providing a "service" with adsense plastered all over the page(s) querying "my" databases ...
The RIPE NCC has a responsibility for all internet users, not only its own members...
That's a whole separate discussion ... Rob