I am asking if this is acceptable inside eve in general, and secondarily, outside of eve but related to it, ala discord, ts3, mumble, etc.
I am asking this also for the legality of people representing me in general here.
no it is not.
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Yes, I think it’s legal.
People pretend to be me all the time.
You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer. You may not impersonate or falsely present yourself to be a representative of another player, group of players, character or NPC entity.
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“Falsely” and “impersonate” being words with debatable meaning. People in EvE often claim to be other people, or from another group, it’s fairly common… so no, I don’t think it’s against the rules. What is wrong is naming yourself in such a way that facilitates that, for example by calling yourself Aiko Danuia and trying to scam people.
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I would think that would go either way… acting like someone is impersonation.
or when CODE. tried to impersonate USIA
Acting as someone with their consent is allowed. A few years ago, someone even ran for the CSM, while a third party pretended to be them during interviews.
Claiming to be part of Goonswarm, when you are actually part of Panfam, is also allowed. The key words there are “impersonate” and “falsely”. Impersonation involves more than a mere claim or superficial similarity, as it includes overt acts to copy, mimic, or duplicate the attributes of another. So, for example, it’s legal to claim that you are an authorized Goon director - it’s illegal to create a character name, corp, channel, etc all designed to support that claim. This is primarily aimed at the creation of names and biographies intended to look identical or similar to the official version. It is not aimed at the mere claim, “I can get you into Snuffed for 200 billion!”
So to clarify on what the question is, I will offer a theoretical interaction.
Person A runs an organization. Person A wants to outsource “diplomacy” to a trusted individual on their behalf. Said person, B, will take Person A’s name and interact with others outside of eve, but in related forum such as discord, while not telling people that themself, person B, is infact not person A.
I want to ask these questions and will give more details as requested.
@ISD_Drew may know better.
It’s outside of EvE so it’s definitely allowed, especially when consent has been given. Nobody is going to investigate the authorship of a forum post.
If you are in doubt, you should make a support ticket, but I am perfectly confident that it’s not a violation.
Thank you Geo, Aiko, I appreciate the guidance on this.
While it is weird to do that, it’s not against any rules.
Even the rules about impersonating someone or making characters with similar name to someone else and represent yourself as the original person is not frowned upon. It happens all the time.
Every one of those names that are not me were made after I made this character. I’ve seen them in mining chat, pretending to be me. I’ve seen 2 of them in rookie chat giving terrible advice and then I get the backlash from it.
ISD’s don’t care, CCP doesn’t care.
Except for the original of course, all of those names were made after the original Aiko. Are they all the same person? Maybe. Doubt it though.
Recently we have learned that the rules set forth in the EULA and TOS do not get enforced as they are written.
Surely pretending to be a member or representative of an in-game group isn’t against the rules, or recruitment scammers wouldn’t be a thing.
Impersonation is more than just a claim or act, but a series of concrete steps taken to mimic or emulate. So for a player in a random NPC corporation to say, “I’m in Goons, I can get you blue standings for 10 billion.” That’s allowed. For them to create a corporation called Karmafieet in an alliance called Goonswarm Fedaration, with identical logos and similarily named CEO characters and a website and a channel and etc etc - that isn’t allowed.
It’s a question of scale and intent.
Difference here is they are not claiming to be. The names are clearly different and distinguishable from Aiko Danuja, there is zero confusion. It would be impersonation if any of them claimed they are the same person in real life.
If you do claim to be someone you are not, whether by permission of the person you are falsely claiming to be (it is ALWAYS false, because one cannot ever turn themselves into someone else) or not, that is impersonation. In my opinion, it makes no difference if someone gives you permission to impersonate them – it shouldn’t be allowed, and that’s how I interpret EULA.
You don’t need person B to lie about who they are in such a situation. Just put up a disclaimer about it into your bio (or send an EVE mail to relevant parties) that such and such characters have permission to ‘‘speak on your behalf’’. Case solved. Everything else is subterfuge and lying and I would not trust such a person in retrospect if they got caught doing that with me. In fact, I don’t trust you now after seeing you even considering pulling something like that in the game.
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no aiko, it’s not
i recall you had that issue happen to you
someone pretended to be you.
Well, I think it is.
You are not our princess.