Although I am unable to use the listservers for reasons beyond my control, everyone, regardless if they can use the servers or not need to look at the pros and cons about the different possibilities of which actions to choose.

If we leave him alone, it will prevent people from using the listserve as we know it. Although we could techincally leave the listserves alone for a bit and then come back after a week, why should the general public have to suffer?

If the purpose of the game is to have fun, and this user is removing everyone's rights from the game, then shouldn't this suppression of rights allow us to moderate the servers? Isn't this the same as moderating the forums? Granted, there is a difference -- we forced onto ourselves the ability to control the listserves whereas we had no previous control. There was no initial agreement from the users that their conduct would be acceptable. In our case, by having the messageboards, the users who sign up agree to use the service at the expense of being moderated.

However, what if we could determine that his copy of jj2 was stolen, thereby removing all his rights to the program? Is there a way to determine this?

Even if we could not determine this, the new listserves are not a product of Epic Megagames and are thus subceptible to our discresion. Should rules be written up on this site of what the proper code of conduct should be by using the servers?

Also, what would Epic do? Epic is in favor of keeping as much publicity about their products that they too would have made the same decision as to ban someone from the listserve?

What it comes down to is this -- Does the fact that the user didn't agree to be moderated because Epic didn't orignally demand that the user agree to such terms a reason to allow him to stay? Wouldn't epic ban this person knowing that he is disrupting the user's rights? Even if they wouldn't, Epic is no longer in control of the listserves -- we are. We created new listserves on someone else's machine and allowed users to have access to that machine. Shouldn't we be able to create rules for using these servers?

I say that banning him is the right course of action, or at least preventing him from coming onto the servers for a determined amount of time. As an added tilt, the user is also disrupting the community that has developed around the game, although that's hardly a reason in and of itself to stop someone from playing.

[Edit]

Heh... I just read the end of the topic and it seems like you actually attempted to do so in the end. ^^ At least my line of thought will be useful when determining this next time and will help speed the decision.