US lawyer and former Internet professional interested in tech, international law, civil liberties & their convergence, plus the sociology of technology adoption and communications. Contributor at techdirt.com, recurrent guest on This Week in Google. Unabashed Huey Lewis and the News fan.
We will never be able to dissuade a country from developing nuclear weapons when we are content to leave a madman in the office who's threatening to use ours.
I wrote this week how Congress's refusal to impeach is mortgaging our future.
Want to think about something relatively normal and in fact a NOT terrible thing the Supreme Court has done?
Good news! If the nation survives the week, so might the Internet, thanks to this recent decision.
I was on This Week in Tech yesterday talking about some of the big recent court actions in tech policy cases (Cox, Anthropic, social media jury trials, etc.) among other things (ex: complaining about the design weakness of USB-C...).
I have a new post at Techdirt that is both a look back at just about everything I've written about Section 230 since its 20th birthday, and a crash course in how it works and why we need it.
It was a two-podcast week for me! In addition to being on Paula Poundstone's podcast, I also was on the Techdirt podcast talking about the Supreme Court and the Internet.
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/10/techdirt-podcast-episode-443-the-supreme-courts-internet-cases/
Perhaps my most timely Techdirt post ever:
Today SCOTUS granted cert in a case involving electronic surveillance.
Yesterday I published a post from a Justice Gorsuch concurrence on Wednesday, suggesting the Court was ready to revisit how the 4th Amendment applied to electronic surveillance.
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/01/15/justice-gorsuch-reminds-the-fourth-amendment-isnt-dead-yet/
Remember 24 hours ago when we were still mad at Hilton, who insisted that these monsters needed to be housed on their properties? Want to tell them?
I've got you covered with this model letter.
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/01/07/dear-hilton-lose-my-number/
This was a hard post to write b/c many are legitimately upset by this decision because it seems to validate conversion therapy. But it doesn't legalize it, and it gives an important tool to those fighting laws (ex: Texas's) trying to do the opposite and punish therapists who accept LBGTQ+ identity.
UGH: I need to reinstall my Nuance Power PDF Advanced sw but the license servers don't work. Thought it was sold to Kolfax but customer service hung up on me and its published email is dead. So I tried Tungsten Automation, which says it's Nuance's successor but there's no one to talk to.
Infuriating...
Anyone know who's supporting Nuance's products?
And if it's really no one, who ELSE is selling (and really SELLING...) good PDF software that can do redaction, page manipulation, TOC, etc.?
If you've been hearing something about Anthropic's Mythos model, and wondering why, my new post at Techdirt explains the cybersecurity implications it, and eventually all AI, will have and how we need to reorient our public policy to address those implications (looking at you, copyright law...)
