Thank you for actually engaging with this question. I read that article back when it came out and I'm not convinced just reaching out informally to a few lawyers is enough due diligence. At least not when the risk is this high. Even then 1/7 of them actually was concerned about it. If we roll with that as the only evidence that was gathered we have a 1/7 chance Bitcoin will be deemed illegal in the future. I'd be more reassured if we had any lawyers actually seriously look into the risks involved. Or had some statements from government bodies that'd be involved that we're in the clear. (FCC in the US? Equivalent EU bodies?)

The difference is that pre-Core-30, Bitcoin did not officially support large file storage. So node operators had much less culpability. As for the "lawyer consensus" in that article you linked, you must not have read it if your conclusion is that "this is not a real risk". Almost all of the lawyers in the article said it's a risk. The question is whether Core 30 meaningfully increases the risk. I think it's obvious that it does, as I said above. Data spam is a slippery slope. We have to draw the line somewhere, and this may be our last chance to draw the line. BIP-444 is the line.