Legal process is not an “authoritarian trick," it's the primary enforceable framework for wide scale, lasting societal change as it's the only method that actually has teeth.
Also, calling legal enforcement as “leaning on the violence of the state” is hyperbolic and a false dichotomy. Every system of rights for and against companies (contracts, privacy, property, speech) comes down to enforceable legal policies.
Examples of cases that have shaped society: Brown v Board of Ed, pollution lawsuits against 3M and Dow Chemical, Massachusetts v. EPA resulted in the clean air act, DMCA, FOSTA-SESTA, the EU Right to Be Forgotten, Reno v. ACLU which outlined speech protections online, interracial marriage protected via Loving v. Virginia, the ruling that now requires police have a warrant to access cell phone data was Carpenter v. US, and these are just a few!
> And even if this were a viable answer: legal process _where_? What's to stop these "creators" from simply doing their computation in a different jurisdiction?
Jurisdictional challenges don't mean a law is pointless. Yes, bad actors can operate from other jurisdictions, but this is true for all transnational issues, from hacking to human smuggling to money laundering. DMCA takedowns work globally, as does GDPR for non-EU companies.
Nobody’s arguing for blind criminalization or over policing AI. But perhaps there should be some legal frameworks to protect safe and humane use.
Also, calling legal enforcement as “leaning on the violence of the state” is hyperbolic and a false dichotomy. Every system of rights for and against companies (contracts, privacy, property, speech) comes down to enforceable legal policies.
Examples of cases that have shaped society: Brown v Board of Ed, pollution lawsuits against 3M and Dow Chemical, Massachusetts v. EPA resulted in the clean air act, DMCA, FOSTA-SESTA, the EU Right to Be Forgotten, Reno v. ACLU which outlined speech protections online, interracial marriage protected via Loving v. Virginia, the ruling that now requires police have a warrant to access cell phone data was Carpenter v. US, and these are just a few!
> And even if this were a viable answer: legal process _where_? What's to stop these "creators" from simply doing their computation in a different jurisdiction?
Jurisdictional challenges don't mean a law is pointless. Yes, bad actors can operate from other jurisdictions, but this is true for all transnational issues, from hacking to human smuggling to money laundering. DMCA takedowns work globally, as does GDPR for non-EU companies.
Nobody’s arguing for blind criminalization or over policing AI. But perhaps there should be some legal frameworks to protect safe and humane use.