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Comment by gcp | Hacker News Reader

The ‘error’ above was pointed out by Maarten Schenk and soon picked up by the mainstream media in Belgium. They point out that if the verdict is taken literally, the ISPs don’t have to block the domains without the www. A massive failure

IANAL but I don't think courts think highly of people who intentionally misunderstand court orders.

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The court order was not misunderstood, it was executed exactly as written. The person(s) who made the final verdict are the ones that misunderstand the technology and that's not the ISPs fault.

The judge's directions were overly-specific but I think his intention was quite clear. If you're arrested and put in badly-designed handcuffs that you can open with no effort, I don't recommend taking them off, regardless.

Historical lesson: I had just joined Microsoft in 1996 when it interpreted a court order literally, using this same attitude, and released a version of Windows without any Internet Explorer DLLs, which was of course not functional. Despite this being exactly what he'd ordered, the judge interpreted this as the corporate equivalent of a toddler having a tantrum, and things went (way) downhill from there.

But the law is the law, not something very similar. Especially things like court orders.

The court order in this case is extremely specific in both what should be blocked and the method of blocking to be applied. It even notes that the blocking is circumventable, but that "it should be assumed the average internet-user will not attempt to find alternative ways to access the site".

Basically, the loopholes the size of a truck are explicitly included in the court order.

IANAL, but I don't think other courts think highly of court orders that intentionally assume the people are idiots.

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