Tech Policy Podcast

It’s a big picture episode! One day (soon?), technology will enable convenient, low-cost gender transition. What does that say about human “nature”? What are the implications for society? What are (some) people getting so upset about? Jason Kuznicki (TechFreedom) joins the show to discuss.

Gender as Essence and as Economic Choice

Cosmos + Taxis issue on gender (including articles by Nathan P. Goodman and by Akiva Malamet and Mikayla Novak)

Pacification (Jason’s Substack)

Tech Policy Podcast #327: The Collapse of Complex Societies (2022 Big Picture Episode)

Tech Policy Podcast #301: The Realignment (2021 Big Picture Episode)

Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and Leigh Beadon (Techdirt) join the show to discuss their new report on the Internet’s (beneficial!) effect on art, entertainment, and culture.

The Sky Is Rising: 2024 Edition

Rather than Destroying Culture, the Internet Has Saved the Content Industries

Filterworld Is a Confused Critique of Algorithms

Liza Goitein (Brennan Center) joins the show to discuss the FISA Section 702 surveillance program. Why is it so contentious? Why is it such a hot topic now? Why and how should it be changed? And what does the Fourth Amendment have to say about it? Liza explains!

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA): A Resource Page

How Congress Learned to Live with Warrantless Surveillance (for Now)

Tech Policy Podcast #339: Will Tech Swallow the Fourth Amendment?

TechFreedom’s Ari Cohn and Corbin Barthold discuss whether AI is going to spark an “infocalypse,” bring about the “collapse of reality,” and destroy our elections. Is AI about to “flood” our “screens” with “misinformation” that’s “dangerous to democracy”? Notwithstanding these quotes from recent press stories, the answer is probably no.

Ari’s Senate testimony

What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes

Scott Brennen + Matt Perault paper

Tech Policy Podcast #358: Information Animals Fighting Information Wars

Tech Policy Podcast #359: Your Right to Lie — With Jeff Kosseff

From February 16, 2021 (Episode 284): Martin Gurri (Mercatus Center) discusses his book The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.

The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

Reality Comes Knocking

From March 2, 2022 (Episode 313): Robert Atkinson (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation) discusses the leftwing push to turn broadband into a heavily regulated utility.

Anticorporate Broadband Populists’ Real Agenda: Destroy the Current Private-Sector System

FCC Revives Common Carriage for the Internet

Zombie FCC vs. Schoolhouse-Rock Supreme Court

A Thankfully Doomed Mistake

The Elephant in the Ethernet Port

Blake Reid (Colorado Law) and Berin Szóka (TechFreedom) join the show to discuss the constitutional and policy implications of applying common carrier rules at different layers of the “tech stack.” Should broadband providers be forced to carry content? Should social media platforms? How about both? Or neither? Maybe the former, but not the latter? How about the latter, but not the former? . . . Wait, stop. That last one is nonsense. Tune in to find out why.

The Greatest Internet Law Chart Ever

Uncommon Carriage 

The Conservative Bias Panic Comes for Gmail’s Spam Detection

The Republican Project to Break Your Email Account

US Telecom (D.C. Cir. 2017)

Carlin Communications (9th Cir. 1987)

Brian Frye (Kentucky Law) joins the show to say bananas stuff about artificial intelligence, the history of authorship, the economics of copyright, why we’re all misunderstanding plagiarism, the mysteries of free will, and more.

Apologia Pro Plagio Suo

Should Using an AI Text Generator to Produce Academic Writing Be Plagiarism?

Plagiarize This Paper

How About Using AI To Determine Whether Or Not Something Is Creative Enough To Get Copyright Protection

AI and the Nature of Literary Creativity

Host Corbin Barthold discusses the campaign by states like Arkansas, Texas, and Utah to age-gate the Internet. As Corbin explains, these states are taking aim at a number of recent Supreme Court decisions, including Reno v. ACLU (1997), Ashcroft v. ACLU (2004), Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011), and even (!?) 303 Creative v. Elenis (2023).

Corbin on the importance of Reno v. ACLU

Paul Matzko on the notorious “fairness doctrine”

Scholarly criticism of the “scarcity rationale”

Corbin on Texas’s H.B. 1181

FedSoc event on age-verification laws

Candeub, Morell, and Toscano in defense of age-verification laws

More from Candeub, Morell, and Toscano

More from Candeub

Jeff Kosseff (Naval Academy) joins the show to discuss his new book Liar in a Crowded Theater, a defense of your First Amendment right to speak falsely (sometimes!).

Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation

The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet

The United States of Anonymous: How the First Amendment Shaped Online Speech

Tech Policy Podcast #350: When the Government Yells at Social Media