> 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.

To me, this is rather a sign that the law is far too complicated and should be radically simplified.

All laws start out as simple concepts. Then they need to be applied to reality, where very few situations are simple.

Just like programming.

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

> 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.

Humans and human societies are the most complex systems we know of, and are full of people who will exploit any edge cases or loopholes.

I think that this greatly limits how much simplification you can have in a legal system and still have it be effective.

There is always a well-known solution to fix every human problems — neat, plausible, and wrong.

Common Law is rarely simplified.

The funniest thing is there is implicit discussion of a remedy other than New York users being banned from activities that qualify as work.

IANAL, but it is generally illegal to volunteer for a for-profit organization federally. See the Fair Labor Standards Act and Dept of Labor site [1].

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_...

If laymen can not read, parse, and understand law, then laymen can not follow the law, and laymen can not have due process.

Or in other words, lawyers are a value add, not a necessity.

That's not what due process is.

Part of due process requires the ability to know an action breaks the law before you do that action.

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.

> A bunch of non-lawyers taking a tiny chunk of law in isolation and speculating about whether something "seems illegal"

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.