Because they violated the law? You're expecting the courts to write new laws from whole cloth here if you want IA to win. The courts don't do that, that's the job of Congress and the Senate.
They can assemble multiple pieces of law (both actual law and prior case law) to create a new precedent (aka case law) but there's no prior case law or actual law that makes what IA did legal.
That's why IA should lose according to the law (y'know, the terms being talked about, your own morals and views don't matter in the eyes of it), even if I think in a just world, IA should just've gotten a slap on the wrist and a warning to not do it again.
> You're expecting the courts to write new laws from whole cloth here if you want IA to win.
They're arguing that it was fair use. Fair use is pretty clearly the law, it's 17 U.S. Code ยง 107.
But the law sets up a balancing test with a bunch of factors, which makes it open to interpretation and means you have to make the case for your preferred interpretation to the court.
Which you can only do after doing the thing and getting sued, because otherwise there is never a court opinion establishing the law one way or the other.
Maybe that's absurd -- maybe you should be able to find out if something is illegal or not before you do it -- but now you're arguing that the law is absurd, not that the absurd mechanism isn't actually the law.
That's not what I said - I said they shouldn't have done what they did, because they will lose.