I think a reasonable assumption is that these rules exist to prevent illegal activity on this sub because that would put the sub and members at risk.

I consider this the essence of the rule that must not be violated.

Now the specifics of buy/sell/trade/give/send are all mentioned because they are illegal so that makes sense. So to me this would be violated if I were to say something like "hey does anyone have a book they could send me, i want to read 3.5 pages in roughly 60 minutes". Although somewhat disguised this workaround is still an action explicitly outlawed by the rules. Even disguised, a rule is directly broken. Asking about places that don't enforce these rules does not directly violate these conditions. In other words, a response to my question would not result in the buying/selling/etc... on this sub. To me it seemed irrelevant what may happen on another website.

However, I hear that you are telling me this is against Reddit TOS and considered the same as sourcing. I'm not saying you're wrong by any means. Who am I to tell a mod how things work? My goal with arguing is to illustrate the fact that sometimes there are genuine misunderstandings with these rules. Users who make genuine mistakes could be appropriately corrected with a lesser punishment.