There is still the nagging concern regarding the fact that, if they couldn't be bothered to change the address format from the Blackcoin code they copied, why on earth would they suddenly be looking at creating this epic ecosystem that is described in the whitepaper?

I don't think copying a coin's source code is necessarily a problem, Object-Oriented programming, especially in open-source, is all about being able to incorporate existing code into your own project but something as simple as specifying an address format that would at least represent the name of your own coin in some way, is one of the fundamentals of coin design.