Battlegrounds - Abuse of the AFK system

[Lax]

It's not a violation of WoW's Terms of Use to harass anyone unless it is specifically through Chat. According to the rules, it's perfectly okay to spam someone with guild charters, duels, group/raid invites and indeed the battleground AFK reporting. The only difference is harassment from AFK reporting can't be handled by a UI addon.

Unless a lot of people complain about this type of problem, Blizzard isn't likely to do much about it. Annoying? Quite. Easy for Blizzard to fix? Not particularly. They would first have to adjust the rules to prohibit this type of harassment, and then it'd be handled on a case by case basis, and even then it would probably be difficult to differentiate between an actual AFK report and harassment.

Sucks. Hope it doesn't happen too often

[thinus]

It's not a violation of WoW's Terms of Use to harass anyone unless it is specifically through Chat. According to the rules, it's perfectly okay to spam someone with guild charters, duels, group/raid invites and indeed the battleground AFK reporting. The only difference is harassment from AFK reporting can't be handled by a UI addon.

I think your interpretation is simplistic.

Rules Related to "Chat" and Interaction With Other Users. Communicating in-game with other Users and Blizzard representatives, whether by text, voice or any other method, is an integral part of the Game and the Service and is referred to here as "Chat."

Flagging you as AFK can be argued as an interaction with you and it is a disruptive effect. You can block most types of harassment with a /ignore. You can also block guild charter spam and duels with native UI settings. You can't prevent someone from flagging you as AFK.

Also:

Rules Related to Game Play. Game play is what World of Warcraft is all about, and Blizzard strictly enforces the rules that govern game play. Blizzard considers most conduct to be part of the Game, and not harassment, so player-killing the enemies of your race and/or alliance, including gravestone and/or corpse camping, is considered a part of the Game. Because the Game is a "player vs. player" game, you should always remember to protect yourself in areas where the members of hostile races can attack you, rather than contacting Blizzard's in-game customer service representatives for help when you have been killed by an enemy of your race. Nonetheless, certain acts go beyond what is "fair" and are considered serious violations of these Terms of Use. Those acts include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:
(i) Using or exploiting errors in design, features which have not been documented, and/or "program bugs" to gain access that is otherwise not available, or to obtain a competitive advantage over other players;

(ii) Conduct prohibited by the EULA or elsewhere in these Terms of Use; and

(iii) Anything that Blizzard considers contrary to the "essence" of the Game.

AFK reporting you can easily be justified as an exploit of an error in design (unintended use of the AFK mechanism) to gain a competitive advantage over you. They earn honor and you get stuck with 15 min deserter flags.

There is currently a macro doing the rounds where the entire raid is reported as AFK. If you are repeatedly flagged as AFK by someone try and get the logs or screenshots of it and submit a harassment ticket with the log entries. In my experience Blizzard is not very tolerant of any kind of harassment or abuse and if it is one person or a guild doing this all the time then I am convinced the GM will ask them to cease and desist which should be enough to stop them doing it.

Just remember that you are not doing the GMs job. The information you give to the GM is that you are being targeted by other players and you provide proof in the form of chat log entries or screenshots. Then you let the GM talk to them about it. If the GM sounds doubtful then ask him if it is their official stance that it is OK for other players to target and disrupt your gameplay in this way.