5 ms·

Don't quite follow the logic - were these books being illegally reprinted in the USA? Or were they originals?

• ramchip 14y ago
  The logic is just that courts aren't stupid. I've noticed sometimes this tendency in programmers (and in my younger self) to see human systems like computers. A court isn't a VM running the law as a bytecode. It's a bunch of humans, and they operate on common sense, too. Often there are gray areas and it's possible to sidestep the law, but you need a minimum of plausibility... if you put a note on textbooks to say "for use as fuel only", then go and sell it to students, I doubt that'll fool anyone. It's the same thing for selling burned CDs with a note to say "for use as recycled plastic only". There's a difference between selling them by the crate to a recycling center, and letting customers buy specific titles individually. The letter of the law may not specify that difference, but that doesn't make it irrelevant.