So what exactly would you consider AH buying then?

I'm spending gil, for advancement via third party's, their making my food that I'm using for my advancement. Mercing been around since 2004, its nothing new. People used to /sh and offer a bribe for someone to run them through the LB quests. How about selling drops off HNM? Your paying gil for "advancement" through third party's?

See there is no clear cut definition, no easy way out. You can't enforce your own personal beliefs on other players even though you want to.

Story time, this happened today btw.
So there is a /sh FC group going on. Some guy decides he's gonna ruin it and does jeuno /sh's for BLMs to help him kill the "RMT party". They form up and head out to the zone the FC group is at. They then follow the guy around and time nuke his mobs. Eventually they run and grab a NM nearby and run it into the group of AFK players (they thought) and proceed to CFH and kill half the group. What they didn't know was that the moment they started their shout, a member of that "afk RMT group" contacted a GM and was talking to that GM as the BLMs ran around messing with the FC'er. The moment they grabed the NM and killed those people, the GM jailed the leader of that group. Everyone got to see the leader suddenly vanish, the leader is now banned for griefing. The rest of the BLM group got off with a warning, they warped out so fast it was hilarious.

So go out and be stupid, watch what it gets you.