I highly recommend that legacy holders who wish to ensure that their rights are respected transfer their registrations to RIPE-NCC, whether they have signed the LRSA or not.
For the uninitiated, this is the crux of the disagreements. (Before I begin, this is not a personal shot at Owen or anybody else.)
Allocations made before the RIR systems were created have no contracts or covenants attached. Allocations made from the RIRs do.
The 'rights' claimed by legacy holders are therefore unenumerated ; their argument is essentially 'nothing says I don't have these rights, so I say I do'. This leads to the current situation, where the legacy holders don't really want any case law or contractual agreements to enumerate what rights they may (or may not) have, because if that happens, they would be prevented from asserting some new right in the future. We all I think acknowledge that technology often races out in front of the law, this situation is no different.
Many people have legitimate concerns about policies at different RIRs, and this isn't a shot at those either. But fundamentally, this has meant there has been a 2 tier system since the inception of the RIRs that legacy holders don't have to follow the same rules as the rest of us.