Right? I’ve always thought delving into the nuance of sentience and the potential legal conundrums posed by dated views and laws in that scope was absolutely peak Trek. It’s about ethics and morality, and figuring out how to do the best you can, and afford sentience the respect that it universally deserves, with the knowledge that you currently have at hand. It’s actually something of a trope in the ST universe. Literally every series in the franchise has at least one “courtroom” episode. While they’re not all great, I think it’s a good tradition to uphold.

Legal Eagle covers the legal issues with it:

https://youtu.be/XVjeYW6S8Mo?si=qdE-MT3S3LSbEfxw

The whole trial probably should never have happened. Star Fleet implicitly accepted Data's self determination by accepting his application to the Academy. Plus, if Maddox thought positronic nets weren't a giant leap in artificial consciousness, why would he be so interested in Data at all?

The legal issues overlap with some of the philosophical issues. There's a long history of investigation into intelligence and consciousness, and none of it is on display in the episode. It's not even a very good introduction to the topic.

This is rather important to today's issues with AI. While I think current AI tech is vastly overhyped, some of the popular arguments against it are just bad.