DPS Meter Usage?

[Niwashi]

There's no such thing as guilt by association in the ToS. Whether your friends and FC mates are breaking the rules or not is on them, not you. I really don't see where you're getting this idea that you're indirectly a cheater just by being around them. But if you don't like to associate with people who will break the rules of a game you're playing, then you can just leave and join another FC instead.

I do agree about the part that SE should do a better job of enforcing their rules. (Not just this one, but they don't enforce their rules against RMT spam or harassment very well either. They made and then immediately dropped rules about the Kick function because keeping rules for it would have required them to enforce them, and they don't like enforcing anything. And they took a ridiculously long time before even clarifying what their rule was in relation to housing plot sales.) But whether they enforce their rules well or not, you can play by the rules and befriend other people who do so, and that would seem to fix the part you're complaining about.

[zoqor]

There's no such thing as guilt by association in the ToS. Whether your friends and FC mates are breaking the rules or not is on them, not you. I really don't see where you're getting this idea that you're indirectly a cheater just by being around them.

On this, I think you are right. I was thinking well what if I started a new character on a different server, etc. (which I really, really do not want to do). What if say, that character was at the end of a successful dungeon and some guy started posting DPS results. Am I then guilty by association? I mean, I left the FC as soon as I learned about this and did not partake directly. That could be the same scenario. I think, plain and simple, peoples' use of things like this are going to affect others positvely and negatively just by virtue that we're all in the same game. But I don't think I'm guilty... and I'm going to stand by that and keep pushing on.

[Validus_Rackham]

OK, first of all you should go look up "letter of the law vs spirit of the law". A ToS has to be written in such a way that, if needed, it can hold up in a court of law. Hence the wording on the usage of parsers and the black-and-white nature of its use. This would be the letter of the law. The spirit of the law is intended to stop people from using a parser as a means to accuse someone of playing poorly or some other such abusive context.

Regarding your fear of cheating by association, there is no way that you could be at fault so no reason to worry about anything happening to you. To keep with the speeding analogy, if you are riding with someone in a car and they are speeding does that mean that you should get a speeding ticket too? You were gaining the benefit of their speeding by getting to your destination faster so by your reasoning you should be at fault as well. Of course, this is not the case. Same line of reasoning applies to your dilemma.