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Recently, we've been writing about SESTA, Congress' latest attack on Section 230 of the CDA, and helping to organize a campaign against it. But there's still a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation out there regarding the bill, so this week we're joined by Daphne Keller from Stanford's Center For Internet And Society and Emma Llansó from the Center for Democracy and Technology to dig deeper into the problems with the bill and why protecting Section 230 is vital.

If you're a fan of the Reply All podcast, then you're probably still processing the story they told in a recent two-part episode about the insane lengths that host Alex Goldman went to track down a phone scammer. If you haven't heard the story, and you think you've seen all there is to see on the "messing with scammers" front... well, you're in for a surprise. We strongly suggest you listen to the Reply All story first — then listen to our conversation with Alex about the whole saga on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast. Reply All Episode 102, "Long Distance" - https://gimletmedia.com/episode/long-distance/

Smartphones have been one of the most world-changing innovations of our time — and for a long time, smartphone design was a hotbed of innovation. But more recently that innovation seems to have stagnated. So where does this technology go next? That's the subject of this weeks episode, in which we try to figure out whether smartphone innovation is still happening.

The economy is important — very important. But is that because it matters in and of itself, or because it's the engine for achieving the things we really do care about? Here at Techdirt we've always been strong advocates of the free market, but we've never been absolutists about things like regulation, and we believe it's very important to explore these issues in detail. This week on the podcast we're joined by James Allworth, co-host of the Exponent podcast and author of a recent post entitled Prioritizing Economics is Crippling the U.S. Economy, to discuss entrepreneurship, democracy, the economy and more. Read the article: https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/the-slow-decay-of-americas-entrepreneurial-society-f9aeb6145891

You may have heard the joke: the best way to do product design for Facebook is to get a job at Snapchat. We've all seen how, after failing to buy the company, Facebook has wasted little time in building its own versions of most of Snapchat's key features. So... is this a problem? That's the subject on this week's episode, were we discuss the ins and outs of this kind of copying and what it might mean for the future of social media.

If you read our post yesterday, you know that Techdirt friend Rob Reid is releasing his latest novel, After On by publishing the first near-half of the book for free on Medium ( https://medium.com/s/after-on/ ). As promised, today we're joined by Rob on the podcast for a discussion about the book, the launch, and what it's like to publish science fiction in 2017. And don't forget to get your copy of the book at http://amzn.to/2sWUBRE

As we reported last month, CDN provider Cloudflare has decided to hit back against patent troll Blackbird Technologies with an aggressive strategy. Leading this charge is Doug Kramer, Cloudflare's General Counsel, who joins us this week to discuss the current situation with Blackbird and the broader patent landscape.

This week's episode is all about copyright and culture, with a pair of the best guests you could ask for on the subject. Almost ten years ago, law professors Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins released a comic book about copyright called Bound By Law, and now they are back with a sequel: Theft: A History of Music. This week, James and Jennifer join us to discuss the new comic and the history of copyright and music (with lots of fair use music snippets to demonstrate the legacy of 'theft')! You should also be sure to check out the comic itself! You can download a digital copy for free of course, but for those who want to get their hands on the beautiful paperback edition, we've got a limited time offer for Techdirt fans: you can get it for only $8.99 at Createspace (that's 40% off!) when you use the discount code 2FESBPRQ within the next two weeks. It's also available on Amazon with a free Kindle edition included when you buy.

We've made FOIA requests several times over the years, with varying results — but there are others out there who have dedicated their careers to understanding and using the FOIA process. One such person is Jason Leopold, a Buzzfeed reporter and FOIA litigator who was dubbed a "FOIA terrorist" by the government. He joins us this week on the podcast to discuss the ins and outs of Freedom Of Information.

One of the fundamental strengths of the internet has always been its decentralization, but over time we've seen a bunch of different forces start to distort this setup. This week, we're joined by Jamie King, director of Steal This Film and host of the Steal This Show podcast to discuss the ongoing efforts to restore the decentralization of the web.

This week we've got a special crossover episode with our friends at TechFreedom. Mike joined their Tech Policy Podcast recently to discuss notice and takedown systems and the future of internet copyright, and we're cross-posting the conversation as an episode of the Techdirt Podcast too.

When the "death of the MP3" started being reported, we were among the very few blogs that said umm, no — but the deluge of eulogies for the still-thriving format has been overwhelming and quite surprising. This week I join the podcast to discuss why the MP3 isn't dead, and how so much of the tech press got it so wrong.

Most Techdirt readers are already familiar with Cory Doctorow, whether via his EFF work, the BoingBoing blog, his novels, or all of the above. This week, he joins us on the podcast to discuss his new book Walkaway and much, much more.

The current instalment of the crypto wars hit full stride with the clash between Apple and the FBI, but in truth the tension over encryption has been around for a long time — and it doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. As our readers know, Tim Cushing has been following these developments closely, and this week he joins the podcast for a discussion about encryption, law enforcement and "going dark".

In the post-Snowden era, we don't have to tell you how important it is to stay engaged with (and vigilant about) the surveillance state in America. Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and author of the new book American Spies — and this week she joins us for an in-depth discussion about the surveillance state today. Of course, shortly after we recorded this podcast, the NSA made major changes to one of its surveillance programs, so Jennifer returned to record an addendum examining this latest news, so make sure you listen to the end!

It doesn't take many stories of people suffering due to unaffordable medicine to make you question the state of pharmaceutical patents, but the arguments in their defense are loud and frequent. Most are variations on the same theme: without the promise of a monopoly, important drugs would never be researched and developed. But does this argument truly hold up? It's come up as a tangent in previous episodes of the podcast, but this week we're dedicating a full episode to questioning the popular defenses of pharma patents and looking for a better way forward.

We've talked before about how the very nature of work is changing thanks to technology, with telecommuting being an obvious trend — but despite some early predictions about the death of the physical office, the reality is offices have been evolving and changing thanks to technology and innovation too. This week, we discuss co-working spaces and other trends in the evolution of offices.

Since Congress threw out new privacy rules for ISPs that were supposed to come into effect soon, there's been a renewed uproar on all sides of the debate about internet regulation. While the big ISPs generally want to be able to do as they please, there are smaller service providers out there that fully understand and embrace the need for privacy, net neutrality and more. One such ISP is Sonic, and this week we're joined by CEO Dane Jasper to discuss why these rules are a good thing.

For a long time now, "use a VPN" has been the default online privacy advice — but is it really so effective? Following the recent VPN boom that came on the tails of Congress scrapping new ISP privacy rules, a few security experts have stepped forward to explain how VPNs aren't all they're cracked up to be, and choosing and using one isn't as easy as many articles and social media posts suggest. Among them are this week's guests, Kevin Riggle (who provided a quick and dirty primer with the key suggestion that most people are safer not using a VPN) and Kenn White (who assembled a list of VPNs he deems "terrible" and not without good reason, recommending a roll-your-own solution instead). They join us to dig deeper into the reality of VPNs and hopefully help some people make better choices.

The basic impetus behind DRM is obvious: a frantic, misguided desire to make digital products behave like physical ones. But the truth is DRM goes far, far beyond that, restricting all sorts of activities that are intrinsic to the idea of "owning" something. Two people who have thought a lot about this are law professors Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz, authors of the new book The End Of Ownership. This week, Aaron and Jason join the podcast to discuss the book and the worrying status of DRM today.