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by jacquesm 1172 days ago
There is a good reason that these things don't move on a dime: you need to get them right. And as the underlying tug-of-war between the two main agencies shows: it isn't always clear-cut or simple. Not everything can be solved by a pull request or an over-the-air update, legal systems evolve and this is by design not a fast process.

Effectively this means that technology will always be able to outrun legal systems, for a little while anyway and that no legal system is ever a perfect match for the society it models and governs. This is not normally considered a problem.
1 comments
Hermel 1172 days ago
No, a good legal system cannot be outrun by technology. A good legal system provides sound foundations based on principles. Fraud is fraud, regardless of whether it is committed offline or online. Just like source code, legal code can be more or less well-designed, and it can yield more or less desirable outcomes. And in this case, the outcome the US legal system produced was much worse than "not perfect". The law failed to provide legal certainty and the authorities failed to provide clarity as well. Let's hope the courts will do their job -- a process that unfortunately can take many years.
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jacquesm 1172 days ago
> No, a good legal system cannot be outrun by technology.

This is not a productive line of thought.

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Hermel 1171 days ago
No, it is very productive. From this principle, one can derive many important properties of an optimal legal system, most notably that laws should be technology-neutral. If a law needs to be changed every ten years, then it is not a very well-designed law.
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