I think the most recent responses to this thread reveal the real question that wants to be asked, and from my perspective it’s a perfectly valid one.
Is what CODE does, and how it does it, valid roleplay?
Well, yes. Yes it is.
A cult-like organisation, following a charismatic individual with a messianic complex, crusades violently across high security space in New Eden.
Seems valid to me.
That said, a refusal to break character after asking an OOC question, in a section of the forum that is exclusively OOC (for the benefit of the roleplay that exists in parallel to it), knowing that it frustrates the other people taking part in the discussion, makes me doubt that that question was asked in good faith. It makes me suspect the CODE/lore threads exist purely as another way to mine salt.
I thought the same when I followed the “suicide ganking is lore friendly” thread earlier this year. Just more salt mining.
It could be an interesting discussion.
Of course, I’d point out that while CODE’s mining permits are a great invention, as a tool for extortion by a violent cult (all perfectly valid roleplay, remember), they’re open to equally valid criticism and derision by their opponents.
I mean, why doesn’t someone just point to the POS Starbase Charters as something that the various empires issued? No mining equivalent has ever been issued or requested by the empires, even when a capsuleer completes mining missions for the empires in empire space!