Sorry about not coming in and clarifying the IMG(faction)'s stance towards the corsairs sooner - I'm about to move and university exams are due in the next couple of weeks, so recently my time spent here on the forums has drasticly dropped.:(Hopefully things will be back to normal within a couple of weeks.
Anyways, replying time..
What I can deduct, extrapolate and assume from station rumours (mainly v4.84 ones - haven't looked through all of 4.85's ones for changes) and previous RP with other players, etc.. The IMG takes a "we don't bother you, you don't bother us" approach to most pirate and terrorist factions in Sirius, with our hospitality to a pirate faction reflecting their demeanour to us when met in space. Reactions to this way of thinking have been rather varied, with the Outcasts being the best case of negative reactions and Hessians being the most positive.
Every IMG contact with the Outcasts has been met with some kind of hostility from the latter party, hence our extremely bad relations, whereas with the Hessians it has been rather civilised and freindly from the get-go (probably due to our shared beginnings/history as miners). While we are unable to openly let Hessians to dock on all our bases for fear of House government backlash, I wouldn't be suprised if we are freindly enough to be their main channel to secretly launder blood diamonds onto the open market, at least in Liberty. I'm not saying it's certain, but I beleive this is an RP possibility considering our relations with Daumann and Kruger..
The corsairs are probably more on the unfreindly side of neutral. Their hostility with Hessians aside, when interacting with IMG, Corsairs seem to have mixed and unpredictable reactions from person to person, with one Corsair pirating us and another some time later letting us pass scot free, or helping kill an Outcast, or some other act of kindness or freindship. This makes us rather uneasy with a preference in avoiding having anything to do with them. We let them on our freeports in a fashion similar to the Hessains (under the table sort of thing), but there is nowhere near enough trust to allow docking rights with our other bases, along with the issue that LeMaitre brought up - IMG/House diplomatic breakdown if we did openly allow docking rights.
The differences and confusion between IMG and CR diplomacy and the Corsairs has been a big issue for quite sometime. When the CR were still using IMG IDs and tags, often the deduction was "CR are IMG because of their IDs, and since they are freindly with us we can land on IMG bases!". Edict 63 was pushed forward to try and rectify this, however as we seem to appeal to the more casual players of discovery our activity to date hasn't been strong or longlasting enough to properly enforce this. Thankfully now that the CR have their own IDs (and with us slowly clawing our activity back after recent problems), the confusion should go away more and more as time progresses.
In terms of Corsairs docking on Aland specifically, that's a straight and blunt no. In fact Edict 63 was more or less declared primarily to stop Corsairs dacking there (with a secondary objective to stop our bases being used as other factions' staging grounds for attacks), after we found on numerous occasions dessies and gunboats sitting in front of the station, killing IMG transport patrols and promptly doing an about turn to dock and sell the loot/pilots. Then there's the raids on our miners - I wouldn't exactly call that freindly behaviour.. but like I said above, there's others taht are more freindly as well. There have been a couple of occasions where my trader got thrown out of a tradelane in front of a wing of 'sair bombers, only to get told "It's ok, you can pass..". One time they even gave me a "truck", but that's a story for another time.:lol:
Also, we are tolerated in Liberty, perhaps even more than in the other houses as we have no "enemy" corporations there.. A sizable amount of Tau niobium does get shipped to Liberty - not all of it goes to the Zoners.
Uhh.. Yes, that is Edict 63. The link is also in my sig..
If you're talking about what I said with corsairs/pirates and the under-the-table-ness at our freeports.. I don't think we'd be spewing out open transmissions going "hey Corsairs - come to our freeports! We have song and dance and all kinds of fun stuff!", or acting like that in front of people. Being open about it would be bad for house trade.
I think IMG freeports (due to their proximity to the houses) would more be like "You want to dock eh? I suggest you leave this area using this particular course which happens to pass right by our back dock where there is noone around.. Whoops! I accidently sat on the open docking door button! I hope nobody got in..." There's no solid proof that we are officially letting them in, but visiting lawful traders know they do at least somehow (whether by corrupt dockworkers or what) because they are seen in the corridors, bar, etc.. Hence the public view that ours are like Zoners - open to all - without the damaging implications to our house trade.