This may seem a bit (or a lot) off-topic to people who doesn't really understand the relation with the issue posted by the OP.
The first thing is that fun and enjoyment could mean very different things to different people. Some people enjoy fighting and PvP style gameplay, other enjoy fighting and Coop (or PvE) gameplay, other people enjoy trading and "making money", other people enjoy exploring... so this is important to understand, that fun is a very subjective word.
Second, no matter what we call fun or how we play this game, in one way or another we do care about what happens inside the game. We do get happy when we get a new shiny ship. We do get happy after winning a prize after a community goal. We do get happy after defeating an enemy, or finding a new trade route or discovering a new system with lots of earth-like planets. And just because we do get happy sometimes, we do get angry many other times. We do get angry when we loose a ship, or when the game freezes, or when we forget to stop after jumping, and so on. And the fact that we get angry and happy, and sometimes even sad simply means that we care about the game, and that up to some point it is important to us. Maybe sometimes not as important as some things in real life, but other times it is more important than other things in real life that you don't like. So it is important and it does matter. Let me ask you something... what would you prefer to loose, a Bic pen (real life item) or an Anaconda fully equipped? So it doesn't really matter if it's made of virtual pixels without essence or if it's something that your hands can touch; what is important is the meaning we give to things. In fact, we all traded very important real life items (money) for something made of ether, just pixels in movement, an idea. So there's no real difference between those things, at least not to us aparently.
And third, since we all play the same game, on the same servers for sometimes very different reasons, and since the game is somehow important to us all, we should get along using the same ethical principles we use in real life. The mechanics are different, sure, but that doesn't give any of us the right... no, not right, the freedom to do anything we like without expecting consequences, and I'm not talking about legal consequences, I'm talking about ethical and social consequences.
Let's try to think the reason for this attack (because there's ALWAYS a reason): We have a new Cmdr. piloting a small fighter, the Viper. He has no cargo nor bounty. He has being playing for 4 days, so let's say his rank was Mostly Harmless". He was interdicted by a Vulture, which I'd say it's safe to assume is a more experienced player. The Vulture kills him. He had no cargo, so we cannot say it was for the money of the cargo. He had no bounty, so we cannot say it was because the money of the bounty. He had no experience and a smaller ship, which is no match for an experienced player in a Vulture, so we cannot say it was for the fun of the fight. So, what's left? Maybe the Cmdr. flying the Vulture just wanted to test his new weapons... then why attack a real person who just bought the game? Why not attack an NPC? Maybe he had a bad day and wanted to shoot something... then again, why not shoot an NPC? All it's left as far as I can see is that he just enojoyed making a newbie feel bad. And that's what this is all about really. People who starts this kind of threads doesn't really care about game mechanics, the doesn't really care on if you call this griefing or not. They are just frustrated because of the gratuitous aggressions. And IMO this is what this, and all threads like this are all about. I know that many people doesn't understand this, and that the fact that this happens so very often in so many games makes them believe this is normal and OK; but it's not.
