Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there's a precedent for this: a pirate MMO server has been granted an official license to continue operating legally. At the moment, it sounds like this is a deal applying to this one City of Heroes server, but hey, baby steps. City of Heroes was the only MMO I ever got really into; I had a max level telekinetic Defender named Spoonman whose battle cry was "All my friends are skeletons!" mapped to the F10 key. I don't intend to go back and play it again on this server, but this game, and every other MMO, deserves to be preserved. It should be standard that we're allowed to run our servers if we so choose, but publishers probably only went down the path of making an MMO in the first place because they were after that sweet, sweet subscription revenue.
That is genuinely fantastic news! Wow, I wouldn't have expected it.