"They" are not greedy pigs. They are simply trying to make a comfortable living. The domain industry is vicious and saturated. I will gladlypay to "opt out". It gives me ebenfits.
And BTW, getting whois protection does not reduce the amount of info sent to the whois servers, it merely replaces the info that would normally there. Well, that 's the way most extensions I made are. Not sure about .co.uk.