A bunch of non-lawyers taking a tiny chunk of law in isolation and speculating about whether something "seems illegal" based on it is really, really useless.
And this HN thread is just going to be even more of that.
And this HN thread is just going to be even more of that.
To me, this is rather a sign that the law is far too complicated and should be radically simplified.
An operating system provide a few set of basic services to applications, but the linux kernel is some gazillion lines of code, because it has to work with reality
Rather: Because the kernel developers care far too little about keeping it small and minimal.
I think that this greatly limits how much simplification you can have in a legal system and still have it be effective.
The most relevant recent test I can find resulted in a settlement, when AOL paid people who contributed articles without payment[2]. There's been some conflicting decisions in other related cases and many are still in progress.
1.https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp 2. https://archives.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/aol_settled_with_...
Or in other words, lawyers are a value add, not a necessity.
Meaning it has to be possible to understand what is legal/illegal for all american citizens, not just the ones rich enough to afford a lawyer.
Motions, Petions, and Trial are essentially the same, except typically also include Lawyers in addition to non-lawyers (pro-se), and rather than speculation, it's called Argument.