No, it kind of is your job to do this.

Case in point: if I am ransoming someone, and they tell me that while they're going to pay the ransom, this will also cause them to cut back on their food expenditures for the month and/or skip meals, does this constitute as harassing someone out of the game? Is this something that can get me punished, were my victim to make such a claim in a support petition?

Because I don't see any better example of affecting someone's real-life well-being than this. Causing someone to do something detrimental to their health as a result of my in-game actions appears to be as much of a real-life effect as something can be.

I'm sorry Falcon, but I disagree with you almost entirely. It's absolutely not cut and dried. You have a game where an unofficial motto is "Harden the f*** up" (or derivatives), I have heard and seen CCP employees using this phrase several times. Others state that you should "trust noone".

This game is a game where what would be considered griefing by almost any other multiplayer game is not only accepted, but it is encouraged. This is a game where people are allowed to lie, cheat, steal, gank and destroy thousands of hours or more of peoples hard worked time and "harvesting tears" is an alliance past time. A game with events like hulkageddon, burn jita and countless other examples of griefing and harassment. By any definition many of these constitute harassment. If you are banning people for it in a game where you allow and encourage these things to happen, then you'd better bet that it IS your job to dictate what you constitute human decency.

All of the above are savage examples of a lack of human decency that you ENCOURAGE. I find every single one of them disgusting, as do many other people. There are other examples that I would find completely lacking in human decency as well. You cannot turn around and tell people they should know what constitutes human decency, while encouraging and permitting the lack of same.

You want it to be cut and dry, but it's not. You are now in a situation where noone has any idea what the line is because actions taken for some griefing are inconsistent with actions taken years ago. It's time CCP stopped hotfooting around this issue and trying to avoid the issue. You created this situation directly, or indirectly and it's unacceptable to try and skirt responsibility on the grounds that everyone should be aware of what human decency is. Most of the acts in the game wouldn't happen if people actually followed your human decency credo that you're spouting now that something truly awful has happened (I'm inferring based on the reaction, as of course transparency only goes so far and there's little information on what actually happened).

Let me be clear, I love the game and it's one with a unique community found nowhere else and that these actions are allowed is partly what makes it what it is.

That being said, you can't say, well we're going to allow you to not bother with human decency for the most part, excepting where we think you've gone too far. It just doesn't work and is the coward's way around. Yes people will skirt the rules, that's what people do. But by having rules you actually set a standard that if broken you can take action.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the concept of "human decency" fluctuates based on culture, country and over time. One hundred years ago, racism, homophobia and women's rights were very different than today. As little as a few years ago marriage for homosexuals was a pipe dream. In parts of Africa, homosexuals are punished harshly by society. In the Middle East, women have much fewer rights. You can't just claim human decency as a blanket coverall and hope that absolves CCP of responsibility.

I might well get banned for this post depending on how CCP are feeling at the moment, this post might get removed. If one of those things happen then it was a fun time, but I wouldn't want to be part of a game who refuses to take responsibility for the world it created.