Lawfare News

The Lawfare Podcast: Gonzalez v. Google and the Fate of Section 230

Jen Patja, Quinta Jurecic, Hany Farid, Daphne Keller, Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Benjamin Wittes
Friday, February 17, 2023, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

On February 14, the Brookings Institution hosted an event on the upcoming Supreme Court oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh—two cases that could potentially reshape the internet. The Court is set to hear arguments in both cases next week, on February 21 and 22. Depending on how the justices rule, Gonzalez could result in substantial changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the bedrock legal protection on which the internet is built. 

For today’s podcast, we’re bringing you audio of that discussion. Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic moderated a panel that included Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, with a joint appointment in electrical engineering & computer sciences and the School of Information; Daphne Keller, the director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center; Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein; and Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes.


Topics:
Jen Patja is the editor and producer of The Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Quinta Jurecic is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare. She previously served as Lawfare's managing editor and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post.
Hany Farid is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley with a joint appointment in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the School of Information. His research focuses on digital forensics, image analysis, and human perception. He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from the University of Rochester in 1989, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. Following a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, he joined the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1999 where he remained until 2019. He is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Daphne Keller directs the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center. Her work, including academic, policy, and popular press writing, focuses on platform regulation and Internet users' rights in the U.S., EU, and around the world. She was previously Associate General Counsel for Google, where she had responsibility for the company’s web search products. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, Brown University, and Head Start.
Alan Z. Rozenshtein is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, a senior editor at Lawfare, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served as an Attorney Advisor with the Office of Law and Policy in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland.
Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.