Asherons Call: Arcane Knowledge 2 and Author's Rights

An interesting situation came up the other day that once again talks about the authors rights to prevent specific users from using their product. This issue revolved around Arcane Knowledge 2 and its author, Hazridi. Many may not have been aware of this, I personally was not, but Hazridi added code to the plugin to prevent specific users from using his plugin, essentially banning people from using it. This was to provide a consequence for some users actions in the game, something that isn't always possible on the NPK worlds. The original version of this code warned users that they were banned from using AK2 and that their hard drive was being formatted, but AK2 never contained any malware, or malicious code of that kind. All that was intended to happen was that the buttons in AK2 would be disabled, although some reported that it would crash their game client as well. Unfortunately, an innocent bystander was caught in Hazridi's routine, as was detailed in this thread, but fortunately Hazridi quickly fixed his routine so that the player was able to use his software. This does bring up memories of the ACScript situation, however that apparently did contain malicious code, not just a false warning. It should be noted that AK2 will still crash your game client if you have the Character Stats filter disabled, but any Decal plugin will crash, taking your game client with it, if you have a filter it needs disabled. I'm sure the plugin needs your character stats for more than just determining if you are banned or not.

This seems to be interesting to debate, but in the end it is for the author to decide how his program will be used, within certain bounds of course.