Blurring the lines

Whenever i'm flying around New Eden, I always pay attention to the traffic.  I usually don't pay a ton of active attention to it, but if I see a freighter flying past, I look at what alliance it is and look at the pipe its traveling down.  If I see a large gang flying through empire, I take a look at what alliance/corp they are, if they're war dec'd, and ponder where they could be headed.

I recently saw a rather large shield gang near Jita.  I quickly checked their alliance descriptions, but couldn't really find where they were primarily based.  No war decs or faction warfare, had a handful of WH and nullsec kills, but not really much lowsec.  I bookmarked a few of them and will check killboards later to see where their gang went splat, but I was mostly curious what kind of corp they were to be putting a gang together like that and flying through empire, especially since it was complete with Scimitars, Lachesis, and Huginns.  Definitely not the typical fleet flavor you see and even more confounding when you look at their alliances complete lack of kills.

Anyways, this led me to take a look into their individual corp descriptions and I started noticing a common theme, which was "anti-piracy" and brings me to my next point.

I don't understand groups that advocate "anti-piracy" and still choose to PVP.  As far as i'm concerned, they're the same thing.  Sure, the romanticized view is that when you take a gang out you're fighting people that are willing to PVP so its somehow consensual, but that naivety quickly breaks down when your nullsec roam comes across someone hauling stuff and you quickly vape them.  How is that any different other than the security status of the system?  Basically, what you're saying is that its ok to shoot targets when you're in hunting mode, but if you come across something and you're not on an alliance sanctioned PVP OP, then its piracy.

An alliance mate I was talking to about this suggested that they think they're making a "space difference" as he put it and I find it hard not to agree.  Sure a lot of people may hate people whose goal is to make ships explode everytime they log on, but at least there's no illusion as to why were here.  This is the problem I also have with CVA's NRDS policy, is that while it looks good on paper and a neat little concept, the reality of it is that its arbitrarily enforced.  There are many documented cases of faked logs showing false aggression and flat out lies, to get someone on the KoS list.

I realize I might be getting a little too hung up on the label of "piracy" as surely its meant in the context of lowsec, and it works when the group doesn't PVP, but it just gets downright absurd when that same group goes on lowsec roams only to shoot at pirates and refuses to shoot at non-flashy gangs until they aggress first, even though they're probably there to pew in the first place.

The truth is, EVE is a PVP arena regardless of the security status, people just don't realize this.  I'm not saying this because this is how I play EVE, i'm saying this because its the truth.  Compare EVE to Battlefield 3, with highsec being the spawn point.  Sure you're "safe", but you can still be killed.  Anti-piracy rules and the concept of consensual and non-consensual PVP would be the equivalent of creating server rules where if you see someone running to get into a vehicle you're not allowed to shoot them until they get in, or you are not allowed to shoot people in the back, THEN going onto other servers and complaining that the rules are different.  Maybe a better analogy would be someone that complains about the morality of prostitutes, but then goes to a strip club and defends the girls by saying that lots of them have "goals" and its only a temporary thing for them, pure denial.

/rant

tldr: People that follow anti-piracy rules but then choose to PVP other times and claim that its "different" are in denial.  Making a "space difference", LOL.