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One sociological basis for an ethical or moral judgement within a given society is whether or not a said action is considered socially acceptable. This is a basic concept of sociology.
Example; In Ancient Greek society, it was socially acceptable for a Master of a Given Craft to follow certain social guidelines. Firstly, he must be Male(obviously to suggest this in modern American society would be considered unethical by many and not socially acceptable). Also, he must have undergone an apprenticeship before being considered a Master. This means that he must have moved in with a Craft Master, and that part of his apprenticeship meant that he was often forced to have a homosexual relationship with his Master. In modern American society, this also would be considered unethical(and actually, illegal).
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So the ethics of this issue could be re-stated this way; it would appear that the vast majority of vocal members of the online MUD social society have made the decision(whether actually backed up in court or not) that it is, indeed, not socially acceptable(within our community) to use even an altered DIKU codebase(like Medievia's, for example) as a method of capital gain. In this sense, the ethics of this topic seem to be related to sociology.
Arguing that it should not be considered unethical merely means that you are trying to change the social norm; the same would be true, in America, if I were to argue that sexual equality in the workplace should not be the rule-of-thumb. However, I would find social resistance to this suggestion, as is the case in the MUDing community any-time someone such as Matt tries to insinuate(or even outright state) that Medievia and such MUDs have not acted unethically.
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