@ Baltar: I'm afraid the massive pirate Gunboat fleet is alive and well in Liberty. This is why someone else brought up the idea of removing their CD slot in another thread. After considering it, I concluded that this was far fairer than banning Gunboats from pirating all together. Yes the lone pirate in a Gunboat is going to be unfairly punished by this, unfortunately if this was adopted blame the Gunboat fleets of Liberty.
The idea was put forward to promote a "mixed" group of pirates instead of what we have at the moment, which is Gunboats everywhere "pew pew'ing everything they can in sight. Don't worry, this was just a discussion in a thread, not a fact of things to come.
I'm not sure pirates are being stamped on in the current rules, the point's you listed are just like the no CD on a Gunboat idea above i.e mentioned in a thread, not fact.
As always any amendment to the current rules gets debated completely in a thread created by an Admin regarding a rule change. This has not happened and no change to the rules are going to come anytime soon without proper debate. So while you may worry about a lot of anti-pirate things you have read, fact is none of them are gospel or for all we know even being considered by the Admins.
@ Spear: Yes ... I'm aware that these are just discussions in the forums. But if you don't hear the opposing argument in these threads ... the admins might believe all are in agreement. Thus I spend a lot of my time challenging these restrictive ideas that people propose ... and I tend to get flamed for doing so. Even admins have knocked me down on my opposition. But ... I do hope I'm not a lone voice in the wilderness on these issues.