The more I watch the development of patent trolling cases or net neutrality issues, the more I come to conclusion that the real problem is that we don't have any good legal and economical representation of the term "asshole". Most of discussions around those topics tend to be about whether or not a given proxy is good enough to capture the majority of despicable behaviour. The core issue is - and I'm probably stating the obvious, but it bears repeating every now and then - that we don't have a legal framework for capturing intent.
Laws take intent into account all the time. It's the difference between acting and assault, for example: Do you intend to put on a show or do you intend to make someone afraid for their safety?
The problem you're hitting on is that being an asshole isn't illegal, because we can't write laws that vague. Well, we could, but they'd be applied inconsistently enough that courts would practically fall over themselves to strike them down. And they should: One person's idea of asshole behavior is another person's idea of normal variation, which is fun when the difference comes down to culture, which always gets recast in terms of race, as in Europe's anti-Roma racism.
