Most people here have a lot of domain knowledge about some combination of startups, hacking, and design, meaning they are quite qualified to comment about those things in an interesting way. Domain knowledge about legal issues is limited to a much smaller subset of people here, so discussions have a lot of strong opinions, but not a lot of basis in established laws.
>>davidw+(OP) Domain knowledge about legal issues is limited to a much smaller subset of people here
This is true, but often times we learn quite a bit from conversations digging into eg IP law. The bigger (and unfortunately) more nebulous area is who writes the laws? That is a question of politics, why discussions have a lot of strong opinions.