> A lot of engineer types forget that the law is not code, and reductionist arguments almost never actually work in practice because it's a human interpreting the law.

It's worse than that: a lot of engineer types reason about almost everything as if it were code. It's a manifestation of Engineer's disease.

For one example of this, around 10 years ago there was a company called Aereo that tried to act as a "cloud television provider". The idea was that they had thousands of tiny antennas hooked up to servers in a warehouse, and they would lease an antenna to each subscriber. This gave an experience similar to cable TV but without Aereo having to pay broadcasters cable transmission fees. The major broadcasters sued Aereo and ended up getting it shut down for exactly the reason you mention. Despite Aereo technically being a TV antenna leasing service, it functionally acted like a cable TV service so they were violating copyright by not paying transmission fees.

It reminds me of tax law in many countries. You can follow the letter of the law, but if the vibes are off, you can still be found to be in breach of a vague catch-all provision (e.g. economic substance doctorine in the US, GAAR in Canada/UK, Part IVA in Australia, etc).

Maybe this is because of the TV dramas where a genius lawyer saves their client through a an obscure technicality. It looks exactly like hacking a system using 0 day exploit.

There is a strong bias by the courts to interpret the law in such a way that it makes sense, and achieves the goals the legislature had when enacting it.