[clnq]

I clearly stated “I’m not an expert on this” and publicly corrected my mistake to not mislead readers.

Don’t fulminate, my brother, see comment guidelines on HN for more info. There’s need to act like this and your comment doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion.

[troad]

> There’s need to act like this and your comment doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion.

Does yours?

I mean that in earnest, not as a dig. You're posting legal analysis without even rudimentary legal knowledge, and I think that's worth noting and responding to.

It's also worth noting you only admitted you were not an expert once your initial post was debunked, and that in your corrigendum you manage somehow to add many additional substantive legal claims. Without any apparent additional legal knowledge.

If you did the same on a programming topic, there'd be an army of people ready to downvote you, because most of the wonderful folks here on HN are versed in programming, and could easily see through that. But this doesn't hold true for law, and you're in a position to mislead. Noting that contributes to the discussion by helping a reader discriminate signal from noise.

[clnq]

> It's also worth noting you only admitted you were not an expert once your initial post was debunked

No, that was in the original comment. I added only the paragraph prefixed with EDIT.

My friend, you are just picking a fight on the internet. You don’t actually know what the comment was and yet you say you do. Please do not.

Alternatively, please tell me how my comment is misleading now, if there truly exists an argument in your comment beyond an ad hominem. That would be more useful.

[troad]

With respect, you seem to be the one struggling to let this one go. In two short comments you've accused me of: fulminating, not being constructive, posting against site rules, picking fights on the internet, posting ad hominem attacks, etc. All I've noted is that you're not legally trained, which you yourself admit.

My respectful advice is that if you're not legally trained, but wish to write legal analysis, (1) pause and consider how useful this actually is to others, and (2) if you must continue, preface (!) your statement with a disclaimer that you're not legally trained.

Lawyers are trained that with knowledge comes responsibility - people tend to rely on what lawyers say, often in unanticipated ways. Not only does this often lead people to go off half-cocked, but it can have legal consequences for the person giving the advice (there's such a thing as negligent advice). Generally these laws apply equally to lawyers and non-lawyers, and simply because you don't have any legal training doesn't mean you're not giving 'legal advice', it just makes your advice all the more dangerous. It seems reasonably unlikely you'd be sued for negligent advice for random comments online (not impossible!), but you should reflect on the ethics of confidently leading people on, from a position of relative legal ignorance.

I realise you may not be receptive to what I am saying to you - you appear to have become somewhat defensive and might be perceiving my words as further attacks - but I'm genuinely not here to diss you, and I'm absolutely not looking for a fight. Perhaps my initial comment was a little glib, but not knowing what precedent is and giving legal advice is rather like not knowing what a variable is but nonetheless giving confident programming advice. Generally best avoided.