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That's definitely one of the reasons RPIs are less attractive commercially. It's a problem in any MUD (you can't just let people run rampant being huge abusive jerks, even if they're customers), but because there are more restrictions on a player's behavior in an RPI (ie he has to stick to pretty strict roleplaying standards), there's more to police for and more to punish for.
The stance I tend to prefer is that we punish for doing things (positive actions). Killing players without good reason, for instance. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of punishing players for -not- doing things (negative actions), and that's where RPIs create a problem in commercial MUDs. Not roleplaying can't be tolerated or soon you'll not have an RPI anymore. For whatever reason, people don't seem to get nearly as angry when their time is sacrificed as when their money is sacrificed, so being commercial magnifies the problem further.
--matt
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