I got the impression that most legacy holders were happy because they got continued registry services at no cost to themselves.

Logical, I expect legacy holders believe they don't cost anything significant extra to RIPE as all RIPE have to do is hold a DB entry and not all the expensive people admin of non legacy space. We're a LIR anyway so it makes little difference, I suspect many other legacy holders may be too, we paid already. Odd that this is the first I've heard of it, I'd expect RIPE to have told us, not the legacy liberation league.

The RIPE NCC appears to have taken the position that as registry services cost money to handle, it would not be unfair to expect that they get some level of compensation from legacy holders:

http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/resource-management/legacy-space

Oi, RIPE, nooo. You can't faff around with stuff that was fine as it is and then claim people need to pay you because the faffing costs money. And my main point stands, why is effort being wasted on v4, get over it, the legacy people will need to get v6, you can charge them then brandon