I do not think rape prots are in place to prevent players from getting their
desired equipment (though it of course becomes harder to get some items), but
instead they are mostly there to prevent inflation. That is, as a by-product
of raping a mob A for an item B, it also generates items C, D, E and F on a
daily basis if the monster can be killed every boot by everybody. And if the
game fills with items C, D, E and F (and also with

, their prices go
drastically down and they lose their value. In the end we'd have every newbie
runnig around with eq that should be mostly obtained by high-end players or
very rich and industiral midbies.
So in a nutshell, the rape prots are not there to make you cry but instead
they are there to preserve the value of items you have spent lots of effort to
gather.
And of course this is just my view, but I believe it covers most of the rape
prots in the game. At least the prots my monsters have. Some special cases and
special wizards may have other motives behind their prots, though...