[anti-abuse-wg] What is Personal information?

RIPE is now claiming the IP addresses they are collecting on their 
blacklist are not "personal information."  I thought business contacts 
are considered "personal information" under the EU privacy directives?  
IP addresses allocated to businesses are in various whois databases.  
Reverse lookups identify domains which also lead to businesses.  It 
seems to me that the blacklisting done by RIPE falls into this category 
when it is used to specifically blacklist a business.  How is is that 
the contacts in the RIPE database are "personal information" yet the IP 
addresses associated with those contacts are not?  Aren't they 
associated by doing a whois lookup that anyone can do?

RIPE won't explain or acknowledge my request to have the matter reviewed 
by the Dutch Data Protection office.  All I got was the vague response 
shown below.

Thank You


 >On 1/16/2012 10:22 AM, RIPE Database Manager wrote:
 >Dear Russ,

 >Please note that we do not collect any personal informations.

 >The access block to the RIPE Database is based only on the IP address.

 >I hope to have informed you sufficiently.