I know I, and a number of people I know in game, do steal yellows. By that I mean looking through your BT for disabled people so you can get a cheap yellow.

Whilst I do know it is somewhat lazy, is it in any way breaking the rules?

I had some claim I was breaking the rules taking the raid without being the disabler. Can one of the older, wiser ones clarify.

Disregarding the "Older, wiser one"... no. It's not against the rules. It's really not lazy, it's not as easy as you would think.

Im flying along, jammin out to house of the rising sun, minding my own business....
Spots derelect ship, blown half way to hell
Crew member : "captain, should we go aboard and see if anything could be salvaged?"
Captain : "No crew member, that would be cheating"

Similar argument.....

Crew member "captain, we have detected an enemy ship, their sensors are weak and our scanners have detected gaps in their electronic counter measures. How do we proceed?"
Captain : "do they have any information that might benefit us?"
Crew member : "yes captain lots of information about unknown stuff and junk; also captain i think i might be able to breach star charts and gain information on their planetary databases."
Captain : "that is all well and good crew member, but we are not interested in new information, nor are we interested in the location of the secret bases of our enemies. Take a quick look and see what you can find, but only try once. We dont want to hurt anyones feelings by being thorough"

Yep thats exactly how it happens in star wars, star trek, and every other space based book/movie/game, we should definately emulate that train of thought

the technique has been called 'ice-fishing' and those of us at low ranks with high number of raids practice this skill diligently.

I called it vulturing when I chanced upon it. I still practice it heavily as the more passive side of my salvage operations...

I once had someone try to convince me that it was wrong and "unethical" to raid disabled players because I did not "earn" the raid, and then also say that they had no issue zeroing raids for the leaderboard.

Some call it farming ... but since I'm a Pirate ....
I call it plunderin tha galaxy fer booty ...