What you're referring to is known as Hellbanning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning) and is used on various sites. I'm mostly familiar with it from Hacker News which employs it.

It's a bit more than that. From the article: "Instead, Lacy called on a state licensing agency, the N.C. Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors, to investigate Cox." The article mentions this could lead to a misdemeanor.

So to use your analogy, it's more like if you got out of your car and a random passerby complained that it wasn't properly parked, so you responded by reporting him for impersonating a police officer.

That it's already out there isn't his defense against the lawsuit itself, but rather against the immediate takedown of his site to prevent damage to sony. He's saying no further damage will be done by leaving it up, therefore the takedown before the judge hears arguments from both sides should be denied.

With regard to #5, I'm not sure where that information came from. South Fulton, TN and Fulton, KY are essentially the same city, split it two by the state line. Everything I've seen relating to this has indicated they were located in South Fulton, which would be in Tennessee (though, obviously I can't speak to where the firehouse is actually located).

Poor Dr. Norvig. I hope Dr. Russell is there to help get him through this.

To extend your analogy, having to carry around the extra weight and volume for both engines kills your gas mileage on the street and causes it to accelerate and handle like a school bus on the track.

I think what you're missing is spelled out fairly effectively in the linked declaration. EMI sued MP3Tunes not for redistributing their IP, but for linking to locations that did. More specifically, they required not only that they remove specific links to specific songs as they had done initially, but that they remove links to every EMI song in existence claiming that they had not authorized ANY of their songs to be distributed online. MP3Tunes declined to do this and was sued. This, however, gives examples of several places where EMI HAD authorized their songs to be distributed as MP3s and thus not every link to every song they own is an infringing link.

The problem with spin-offs is that many of the minor characters are voiced by the same people who are wanting the pay bump. For instance, Hank Azaria does the voices of Apu, Moe, Chief Wiggum, Carl, Comic Book Guy, Dr. Nick Riviera, Prof. Frink, Cletus and more.

And since I don't forsee the actors saying "oh, it's a new show, then I guess I should be content making less now," it'd be hard to create a solid authentic spin-off.