My main concerns is about listing people that did not gave permission or want to be named.
First, the people who are listed at some Point (I guess) killed someone in space (or at least did a serious try to). Killing someone in lootable pvp is known to sometimes cause you to "global" (at least pvp4), which is shown all over the server. Additionally, if you have killed 10 or more, you are likelt to, at some point, get on the Hall of Fame list for "killing spree". If you are frequently seen near a space station then it's likely that other adds one and one together, and gets the conclusion it's someone who kills a lot of (different) people in space, aka "pk:er".
Secondly, who who are pirates is information that is of importance for those who fly in space. MA made a system with "karma" to show this - but as Karma sometimes doesn't work as intended (pirate A shoots down pirate B a couple of times, or Pirate B idles in passenger seat) makes it a bit of necessity to have a second system. And, after all, though there can be errors in such a list (with I'm fairly sure can be corrected), those who are on the list did something to get there (again, unless there is an error or misunderstanding).
As for "KOS list", in a way it's silly, on the other hand, if a reputable service knows of someone who is likely to cause interruptions, it's pretty natural to try to neutralize the threat. It's not more different than if society A hold a LG LA, and society B arrives and wants to take it over, until something different is said everyone in A is "kos" for B, and everyone in B is "kos" for A, at least until the dispute is settled ("we won't kill you if you won't kill us").
The pirates has (as far as I know), one mothership (and a privateer). And I'm pretty sure that if they see that mothership in the vicinity, they want don't want the threat from it (risk to get shot down) or annoyance (delying warp) close to them. As the pirates probably otherwise attacks first, it's natural to go out with an open "don't go close of I'll shoot" (again especially if ship is owned by known pirates). As for the case new owner "inherits" the KOS status, it can be a warranty against a pirate alt takes over the ship to fly under false flag to be able to attack by surprise. (After all it took a while until it was discovered who really operated DN.)
There are similar cases where a warning for some people can be in place. For instance, if someone is known to gather hunting teams at Akmuul and then eradicate team on other side of border, or if someone is offering space rides and immediately get the passengers killed (&looted) on arrival in space and then deserting them.
In Entropia, there is no "insurance", or "police ships" (NPC)..
Another dimension of this is that there are pirates and abusers. Pirates who just do "their job" and try to be as less obstructive as possible, and people who'd do anything (alts, speed hacks, summon noobs etc) to get what they want. (And people who aren't pirates but uses this as a pvp arena to get the revenge on their boss at work and shoot down same person 10 times.)
Keep in mind, many of the players here (well at least me) joined the game before PVP got such an impact as it gets in space - back at the days you kind'a had to look for pvp areas and there was only one lootable area (while amethera was wild west sort'a). Maybe the possibility to avoid pvp areas was a key factor to chose this game instead of games like WoW and other games where all areas outside cities is pvp. PVP can be fun if it's voluntary and you can leave any time, not as fun if you have to pass through, it's lootable (=others can profit on killing you) and you risk getting stuck in middle of it if you made a single mistake.
And, well before vehicles, I started to skill up TP:ing to be able to move around swiftly. Something that is useless with space. (Well I use vehicles to.)
As for travelling in space, I use mothership services as I like travelling fast, and at the same time I use taxi services (to kind'a help other players and) to be able to go to planets to join events that isn't synchronized with mothership schedules, and to visit planets like Cyrene where motherships rarely go (or, where I can't be back on calypso same evening so I'm certain I can be on calypso when I log in next day). Since space map got enlarged I don't fly much in space anymore (especially not to NI).
