People could always simply argue in court that their torrenting was free use.

If you're just some nobody representing yourself instead of an expensive lawyer acting on behalf of a large company, maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.

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dotancohen 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It has been often said that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.

	▲	gzread 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And a lawyer.

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_heimdall 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unless I'm mistaken, the relevant copyright laws aren't limited to enforcement when money exchanged hands.

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moron4hire 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No, but it does matter how much money the alleged infringer has.

Property law is mostly concerned with protecting the rich from the poor, so when a rich person violates the property of a poor person, the courts can't allow the inversion of purpose and will create something called a "legal fiction," which is basically the kind of bending-over-backwards that my children do to try to claim that they didn't break the rules, actually, and if you look at it in a certain way they were actually following the rules, actually.

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gzread 15 minutes ago | parent [-]

This sort of thing used to be heavily downvoted on HN. How the site has changed in the last year.

	▲	moron4hire a minute ago \| parent [-]
		[delayed]

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thisislife2 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sadly, in many courts, when it comes to the corporate and the government, the judges rule on the axiom, "Show me your lawyer first, and I will rule, rather than show me the law, and I will rule".

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chongli an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.

Many judges take a dim view of expensive lawyers trying to pull the wool over their eyes with sophisticated but fallacious arguments. You have to deal with a lot of BS to be a long-standing judge, so it seems like resistance to BS may be selected for among judges.

	▲	kube-system an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sorting BS from non-BS is pretty much the daily job description for a judge.