Memegank wrote:Which leads me to my next point; in cases of multiboxing, shouldn't both accounts involved receive punishment?
I'm glad you asked
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Having researched the relevant bylaws extensively and practiced litigation with cases that involved multiboxing, the relevant case-law in the current jurisdiction is interpreted by the judicial authority in the following way:
When a player is caught multiboxing he's given a choice between the two accounts he was multiboxing on - he needs to choose which account to keep, the other is banned.
It is to be understood that most multiboxing cases involve single-offenders and the characters involved are usually main/alt, both bearing value to the offender. Therefore the punishment, although more lenient than prescribed by the letter of the law, seems appropriate for first-offenders and my professional opinion on the matter is that it is enforced fairly.
In cases of multiboxing with dispensable lvl1 characters, whose character and account value equals the time to create and summon a new character at the location of the banned character (~1 minute), and where the offenders are repeat-offenders, one must reexamine the letter of the law and reconsider the severity of the punishment involved. One also needs to consider the time spent by law enforcement (GMs) and judicial authorities (senior GMs, admins) to uncover, monitor, investigate, confront, punish and handle the appeals of such cases, the total time of which far exceeds the time loss for the offender.
In other words, application of the case-law multiboxing punishments is inapt for dealing with multiboxing involving lvl1 characters, as the net effect of the punishment is detrimental to the server - time lost of GMs and admins far exceeds the punishment for the offender and therefore completely fails at preventing recidivism. Should the legislative authority (admins) desire for multiboxing to remain forbidden they, need to consider harsher punishments for cases where banning the account (of player's choice) has zero negative consequences for the offender, for the current punishments are failing at disincentivizing offenders to refrain from recidivism.
Disclaimer: The above analysis is freely provided for the purposes of contextualizing the relevant rules and bylaws that govern multiboxing and their application throughout the server's existence. The analysis is not in any way related to the topic at hand, rather it aims to provide clarity so that the interlocutors of the discussion can understand each other more efficiently.
