Honestly, striking the whole rule probably wouldn't have a noticeable effect on game balance. One guy flying two transports is half as able to defend his convoy from piracy. One guy flying two miners is only drawing the eyes of more people to the system he's in. Even if someone can abuse their abundance of functioning hardware to make more money in-game, they will eventually run out of things they want or need to buy.
Sure, that's twice as many lolwut battleships such a player can fund, but if we can surmise it's slightly difficult to fly two transports at once, just imagine how big of a pain in the butt it would be to drag two capital ships around. I doubt everyone'd be hooking up a second tower and monitor to their battlestation to multibox in an abusive way.
Besides all that though, striking the selected clause is a good idea. Permitting players from the same IP to participate in playing Discovery would be a positive thing. I have some friends I'd like to show the game to, but I'd much prefer to start out with a LAN party to get everyone set up. Herding cats is slightly easier when you can see them in person. In addition, it might be good to prescribe or suggest that:
Players discovered to be abusing this leniency will suffer some kind of punishment, such as a loadout or bank account adjustment.
Players sharing an IP address not also share a forum account (with exceptions for faction management accounts or roleplay alts).
There's opportunity for players to take advantage, yes, since without a well-defined (if ill-conceived) rule such as a mandated one-to-one IP-to-player ratio, it's extremely difficult to prove abuse, but I also suspect that abusing the system might be too much work for your average player to consider investing in a game.
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This is still relevant and needs to be addressed by the current administration. A lot of people trade and mine for fun, let households have their fun too.
