[anti-abuse-wg] Privacy requirements

 >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