Sure, abuse contacts are currently mixed with personal contacts,
As I understand it all the contacts in the database are a situation where the person agreed to list their information in the public database. Every privacy law I have ever seen exempts such information from the protection schemes. What RIPE and others on this list do is make some vague reference to some privacy law somewhere and some unnamed legal adviser put forth some kind of opinion that does not seem to be written down anywhere. The real story, as i see it, is that people want certain types of contacts. If they get a message about their ip address block then they want the message. If it is spam then they don't want it. They don't want to accept the fact that you can't have it both ways. If your contact information is publicly available for whatever reason then the spammers are going to get it. In any case I have contacted the Dutch Data Protection Authority and I have asked them to review the situation and provide a ruling. These offices are usually full of red tape so if someone locally can follow up maybe we can get a ruling. Thank You