Loophole Abuse/Real Life: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}{{cleanup|Needs a comprehensive edit pass for grammar, usage and word choice, at the least; additionally, a few examples below are borderline [[Word Salad]] and need review, research and rewriting.}}

* Anyone that has circled 'X' when teachers told you to find it. [[Mathematician's Answer|Mathematicians will surely applaud such an answer...]]

** Done by [http://franciscotrindade.blogspot.com/2008/06/encontre-x.html this anonymous Brazilian student]: It turned into an meme, but there's no way of knowing if this is from an actual text or just done as a joke.

** Knock on the [[Almighty Janitor|janitor's]] door and offer him the barometer in exchange for telling the student the height of the building.

*** The expected answer is to measure the difference in air pressure (which is how aircraft altimeters work). It should be noted that unlike the more "creative" methods, this one will provide an answer in meters using ''only'' the barometer.

* Another joke involves a mathematician being asked to enclose a flock of sheep using the least amount of fence. He builds a small fence around himself and declares, "I define the side I am on to be the outside."

* At one point, the election rules for the [[Absurdly Powerful Student Council|Cambridge Union]] stated that candidates were allowed to put up one poster in the Union lobby but it had to be a certain size and it had to be "monochrome." One [[Amoral Attorney|law student]] complied by putting up a poster of the statutory size... on fluorescent yellow paper. (He got away with it, as a poster that has ''one color'' is technically "monochrome." They changed the rules for subsequent elections.)

*** This actually was exploiting a loophole, helped by [[Technology Marches On]] - the Versailles treaty stipulated that the largest battleships Germany was allowed to build had to be no bigger than 10,000 tons, which under 1919 conditions would have meant a slow coastal defence vessel. A decade later, when it had become possible to build large ships by welding steel-plates together instead of using rivets, thus saving weight on the hull and enabling them to install a larger engine, thus creating "pocket battleships" possible, which were in effect small battle-cruisers.

** Shortening the service obligation of soldiers in the army so that, while the army remained small on paper, it was building an unofficial reserve of trained men it could quickly call up in case another war broke out.

*** And when the Nazis came to power they immediately loopholed ''this'' provision—they used the 'Reich Labor Service' to conscript hundreds of thousands of healthy young men and train them as disciplined, military-style work gangs on public service projects such as roadbuilding, as well as marching, living in tents, and other such skills—IOW, soldiers in all but name. But since they weren't actually given any weapons training they weren't technically ''military''... even though, with military-style training already 90+% complete, the Labor Service people could potentially be mobilized as fully trained soldiers almost immediately, just by running them through a basic marksmanship course.

** Developing new weapons systems by subsidiaries in neighboring countries and Russia.

** Of course, many, mostly in the video game industry, have came up with ways to fight back since they’re aware of the problem and got creative with [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vl1eDbnijA some genius ideas].

* This [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEXd5enML5Q video] has of activities that are surprisingly legal. One such case was in 1992 when [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer Jeffrey Dahmer] was convicted of murder, but not for cannibalism. In most US States, there no clear law against cannibalism, but there is a law against necrophilia in Wisconsin.

* “[[Don't Try This At Home]]” is often used to advise people that the dangerous stunts are done by those who are trained and aware of the risks. However, [[Meat Loaf]] pointed out a loophole… there's no mentioning of doing it outside of home.

* Australian gun-laws restrict pump-action shotguns. Enter Adler Hunting Arms Company with a ''lever'' action shotgun.

** The NFA has very weird definitions for "pistol" (No shoulder stock only a single vertical grip), "rifle" (Pistol, but has a shoulder stock and/or two vertical grips) and "shotgun" (smoothbore designed to fire shot. Grips and stocks are irrelevant). This means a pistol with a stock duct-taped to it is a rifle (and the ATF will crack down on you both for an illegal modification and a short barreled rifle), a rifle without the stock is now a pistol (regardless of length), and stub nosed revolver with a long cylinder that takes .410 bore shotgun shells is ''not'' a shotgun because it is rifled and officially chambered in .45 Colt. It's even more obtuse and non-sentential as it sounds.

** "Firearm" shotguns are shotguns (in the sense that they are designed to fire shot) are short longarms that are not legally "shotguns" because they were not built with a shoulder stock and the NFA's definition of "Shotgun" (and by extension its definition of short barreled shotgun) only covers weapons originally designed with shoulder stocks. They are not Any Other Weapon because they are too long.

* Back in 2009, and yes a clip of the case can be found [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVyg_IBZGKE here], a teenager in Texas had trouble getting her car started and didn't want to be late for school. Luckily for her, she happened to have a horse since there wasn't any rule on what kind of mode of transport a student can take to school. This ended up a bit subverted, as the principal demanded to know why a horse was being brought in the first place after being asked.

* "Antique firearms" <ref>Short version: black powder weapons that don't use fixed cartridges</ref> are (despite the name) not legally firearms in the United States (though they are still a "deadly weapon" and some state laws do consider them so). There is indeed a market for concealed carry cap and ball revolvers.

* The semi-protection rule on MediaWiki sites such as [[Wikipedia]] in theory should deter if not prevent newly-registered vandal accounts from defacing articles protected under said rule, on the grounds that they should make a dozen or so legitimate edits to be given access to protected articles. However, enterprising trolls can take advantage of the sandbox feature by making innocuous edits for their account to count towards an autoconfirmed status, and thus be able to vandalise even supposedly-protected pages. This caused an issue when pages on contentious topics such as the state of [[Israel]] and [[The Holocaust]] became a prime target for vandalism and anti-Semitic sentiment even from autoconfirmed accounts, forcing Wikipedia to [[Obvious Rule Patch|adopt]] what is called an extended-confirmed protection rule where pages receiving heavier-than-normal vandalism or those that pertain to controversial subjects (by way of arbitration enforcement by Wikimedia staff) can only be edited by established accounts, as while giving the pages full protection (i.e. only admins can edit) would have been anathema to the site's principle of a "free encyclopedia", they wouldn't want to see anti-Semites, racists and trolls savage articles on Jewish subject matter and other controversial topics either.

* While the Volstead Act during the [[Prohibition]] era banned the production, sale and distribution of alcohol in the United States, it wasn't without its loopholes: the act allowed grape farmers to sell grape concentrates "on the legal fiction that it was a non-intoxicating fruit-juice for home consumption"; while there was a warning advising drinkers not to let the grape concentrate sit for too long as it would otherwise ferment, many simply ignored the warning especially as it was merely there to allay any legal suspicion. Besides the sale of grape concentrates which were surreptitiously fermented into actual wine, some posed as religious organisations or clergymen in order to take advantage of an exemption allowing the use of sacramental wine.

* On wikis such as [[Wikipedia]], the semi-protection restriction is intended to keep IPs and newly-registered users from tampering with them; it is however trivial for a determined or shrewd vandal to make filler edits on let's say the sandbox page and thus be able to be granted autoconfirmed status.

 

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