There is certainly more to be said on the subject, but here are a few thoughts. On Prawfsblawg Gaia Bernstein wrote:
[T]echnologists [...] often put their faith in the power of legal solutions, while legal academics frequently demonstrate a strong preference for technological answers.
She went on to give a theory for why the legal side reacted as such, but I commented in demurral about her initial observation:
In my experience I've found the opposite to be true, at least as far as technologists are concerned. While I think several years ago technologists may have more been of the belief that, the law being just, it would get out of the way, so to speak, and let technology develop. But I think many technologists are becoming increasingly scared of the law, having seen it too often be wielded as a club against technological development (see, e.g. the DMCA), and now doubt that it will be able to provide good solutions.Or, if they do still believe in the law's ability to provide solutions, what they actually believe is simply that the good law will win out over the bad. Which is a different thing than believing that the law will somehow provide overall solutions that technology can't.
(And with regard to the lawyers, I run into many legal thinkers with minimal faith in the ability of technology to solve problems. On the contrary, there are many with an inherent distrust of technology, who feel they must use the law as a means to control it.)