I don’t think this works as a loophole in the case where the proxy serves no purpose other than to remove license notices. It might work in a case where the proxy was something transformative, had some other purpose, and failed to preserve licenses in a more passive way.
The key thing to know is that the US legal system runs on counterfactual court cases, and the ideology that informs judges’ decisions is not a mechanistic programmer-ideology. In particular, they don’t like to rule in favor of things that look like overt gamesmanship. So, when there’s flexibility in the interpretation of terms, courts not only can choose interpretations that support the intent of the contract, they will systematically bias their interpretations in that direction. The details of the contract constrain what rulings they have available to choose from, but they usually constrain it less than you think.
I don’t think this works as a loophole in the case where the proxy serves no purpose other than to remove license notices. It might work in a case where the proxy was something transformative, had some other purpose, and failed to preserve licenses in a more passive way.
The key thing to know is that the US legal system runs on counterfactual court cases, and the ideology that informs judges’ decisions is not a mechanistic programmer-ideology. In particular, they don’t like to rule in favor of things that look like overt gamesmanship. So, when there’s flexibility in the interpretation of terms, courts not only can choose interpretations that support the intent of the contract, they will systematically bias their interpretations in that direction. The details of the contract constrain what rulings they have available to choose from, but they usually constrain it less than you think.
I think there is also some path dependence in the legal system.
Imagine that someone sues Google for providing you outputs of some AGPL website in their search results. Almost certainly, Google would win.
Afterwards, the company that runs the link-removing proxy from an AGPL software can try using this as a precedent.
If necessary, more smaller steps can be made, navigating the courts to the desired decisions.