Given that you don't seem to see this sort of rhetorical pattern throughout, you just find fault with one specific sentence and the use of "obviously" and "copy

Given that you don't seem to see this sort of rhetorical pattern throughout, you just find fault with one specific sentence and the use of "obviously" and "copyright infringement" it's only fair and reasonable to assume it's nothing more than an editing oversight. You're really reading way too much into this. You would need to show that Doctorow has a pattern of doing this to even have a reasonable suspicion. He's a great writer, but he's human. Consider this: he didn't want to say "playing an Indian DVD in Tulsa is obviously not copying", he wanted to say, "playing an Indian DVD in Tulsa is obviously not an infringement on the concept of copyright as it is generally defined both colloquially and legally." He means that in the same way that telling people how to bypass DRM is NOT itself copyright infringement, even though it's a violation of a copyright-based law. I mean, there's not an easy shorter way to say, "it's ludicrous to think that DVD playing in a different continent is possibly copyright infringement, regardless of the complex legal arguments that get such an argument all the way to the point of a portion of the SCOTUS getting this wrong." Do we even have a way to talk about the concept of copyright infringement separate from the overly materialistic discussion of "copying" or the risk of being interpreted as making a legal argument internal to attorney-style legal chatter?? I think the implied part of the sentence you're tearing apart is: "it's obviously not copyright infringement (in terms of what that actually means as both a general and legal concept and yet our screwed up legal system has allowed people to make a legal argument to that effect!)" This is similar to my reductio ad absurdem still. The law can say that a cartoon is a child, but the law would be obviously wrong. But the law was getting at what is "child pornography" and that doesn't mean the cartoon is a child, it means it is a cartoon of a child and thus debatably child porn. There's no legal idea in that case that the cartoon is a minor-age citizen/resident etc. In "child porn" child is more of an adjective than a noun.