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We're continually amazed that so many companies still think they can get away with abusing the law to take down parodies, satire, and criticism without invoking the Streisand Effect and making things worse on themselves. One person who has a lot of experience being on the receiving end of these foolish threats is artist and culture hacker Danielle Baskin, whose recent Brand-Aid project is just the latest in a series of works that drew the ire of Johnson & Johnson. This week, Baskin joins us on the podcast to discuss what it's like when your art is constantly hit with demands to cease and desist.

The pandemic has brought us face to face with important questions about (among many things) the roles of technology and government in our lives, and especially the intersection of the two. One interesting example that is worth exploration is California's new digital vaccine record system, and who better to discuss it with than the person who spearheaded the project: California's Chief Technology Innovation Officer Rick Klau, who joins us this week to discuss tech, government, and what happens when the two manage to work well together.

Most people are pretty clear on the fact that the First Amendment prevents the government from making rules about speech — but what about when government officials make informal demands or threaten retaliation related to speech? Such actions have been ruled to violate the First Amendment, but this practice — dubbed "jawboning" by this week's guest — raises messy legal edge-cases and grey areas. We're joined by University of Chicago Law Professor Genevieve Lakier, who recently authored an article for Lawfare on the subject, to discuss the legal history and status of jawboning and the problem of informal government coercion. Informal Government Coercion and The Problem of "Jawboning" by Genevieve Lakier: https://www.lawfareblog.com/informal-government-coercion-and-problem-jawboning

Freedom of speech sits at the intersection of so many of the topics we write about here on Techdirt, and some of our favorite podcast guests are true experts on the subject. One such guest is UCI Law Professor and former UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye, who joins us again for this weeks episode and a wide-ranging discussion about some of the most pressing and current free speech issues.

Although it's taken a bit of a back seat lately, the topic of patents has long been important here at Techdirt. Now that we're in the first ever Patent Quality Week, it's time to dig back in and talk about changing the patent system and turning it into something that enables good patents without allowing so many bad ones. So for this week's episode, we're joined by Engine's IP Counsel Abby Rives to talk about the inception and goals of Patent Quality Week, and how to fix our broken approach to patents.

If you've been following our coverage of Florida's recent law about social media content moderation, you know it hasn't been going well — it was an insane bill that was quickly shut down by an injunction from a judge who could see how obviously unconstitutional it was. But the fight isn't over, so this week we're joined by Florida Representative Anna Eskamani, one of the most vocal critics of the bill in the state legislature, to discuss how this all happened and what's going to come next.

We've been talking a lot about the huge effort in Congress to pass new antitrust laws targeting big tech companies, and all the issues these proposals have. This week, we've got an insider perspective on just what's going on with antitrust in the House: Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who called out many of the deficiencies in the bills during last week's marathon markup session, joins us for a discussion all about the many, many problems in all five proposed antitrust bills.

Even among people who recognize the problems with holding platforms liable for user speech, there's an understandable temptation to treat the act of content amplification and recommendation differently, since that's something the platforms do themselves. While you can see the logic to this idea, the fact is it's just as difficult and fraught with problems as other intermediary liability proposals. This week, we're joined by frequent guest Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, to discuss her recent paper on the subject and why regulating amplification isn't the simple solution it might sound like. "Amplification and Its Discontents" by Daphne Keller: https://knightcolumbia.org/content/amplification-and-its-discontents Separately, this is the first time we've had a sponsor for the podcast! The Pessimists Aloud podcast is sponsoring today's episode. It's a new offering from the Pessimists Archive Twitter feed, which finds old articles that are skeptical of technology, which in retrospect turned out to be incorrect. The podcast takes those articles and has them artistically read (in an old-timey voice) aloud. We think fans of Techdirt will certainly enjoy the Pessimists Aloud podcast: https://anchor.fm/pessimistsaloud

It's no secret that the tech industry has lost much of the diversity that was present in its early days and grown into a male-dominated field rife with sexism and gender disparity. Today, many people are work to change this — and one such effort is the GirlCon, which is holding its fourth annual conference for women in tech from June 27th to 30th this year. On this week's episode, we're joined by GirlCon co-founder Kyla Guru and co-director Vidya Bharadwaj to discuss this year's event and the ongoing fight to empower the next generation of women in tech.

Earlier today, we announced the release of an open source playkit for Money City, our new game about the future of money that was designed and run for MozFest 2021. For this week's episode of the podcast, Mike is joined by two of the people who commissioned the game — Erika Drushka and Chris Lawrence from Grant For The Web — as well as our game design partner, Randy Lubin of Leveraged Play, to talk more about Money City and using games to explore serious topics and generate useful ideas. Money City Playkit: https://copia.is/projects/money-city/ Copia Gaming: https://copia.is/gaming/