[chc]

Computers are not possessed of free will. You don't really ask them for things. You either compel them to take an action or you don't. Knowingly exploiting a glitch in a computer is like asking somebody for their wallet with a gun to their temple — despite the fact that the exchange could be described as a request and agreement to that request, you have made it impossible for the recipient to decline under the circumstances, so we classify it as something else.

[mikeash]

I'm not convinced that free will is even a coherent concept, let alone something that humans possess.

[chc]

Then a lot of the law will probably seem a little odd to you, because it is pretty solidly on one side of that debate. I'm not qualified to prove this one way or the other, but if you want to understand the law, you have to go in with the assumption that the average human being is in deliberate control of their actions under normal circumstances.

(AFAIK it is pretty hard to come up with a system of law that doesn't start with this assumption without it being either completely ineffectual or very oppressive. Whether or not free will exists, it's at least a very handy abstraction for distinguishing good actors from bad ones.)

[mikeash]

Much of the law does seem odd to me, although I don't think that's why.

As far as I can tell, the law is based on a collection of ideas we collectively identify as "justice". In no particular order: that punishment can reform a person so they no longer commit criminal acts, that the threat of punishment can cause a person to refrain from committing criminal acts, and that punishment as revenge is just a good thing.

None of this has anything to do with "free will", whatever it is.

[chc]

Volition is a huge part of deciding how we want to punish someone and even whether a specific act was criminal at all. If you did something bad of your own free will, the law probably wants to have a word with you. If you were forced into doing something bad against your will, you very well might not be punished at all, and instead the person who forced you to commit the act might be culpable because it was their volition that caused the law to be broken.

[mikeash]

It's tough for me to discuss this, as I don't understand what free will actually is. Could you define it for me?

[Igglyboo]

I come to a fork in the road, I can choose to go left or right.

A computer comes to a fork in the road, x == 5 so it goes left, it does not have free will and cannot choose to go right, it always goes left if x == 5.

We can argue "but what about determinism" all day but I'm pretty sure you understand what we mean by "free will" and are just being pedantic.