What exactly was the problem 4chan was having, and why were they having it?

Sure.

So the United Kingdom, uh, and a bunch of other countries around the world, Australia and the European Union and its member states, uh, started pushing online censorship laws starting in about two thousand eighteen, nineteen.

And that was a reaction to two things.

First, Brexit, uh, which was regarded as being, uh, internet-driven, and also the election of President Trump in two thousand sixteen, which was regarded as being an internet phenomenon, particularly from 4chan itself.

Um, and so what happened was between two thousand sixteen and two thousand nineteen, uh, we saw a lot of increased censorship on mainstream social media networks.

I mean, if you recall back to two thousand fifteen, you know, then Twitter, uh, you know, was, was pretty anarchic.

Mm-hmm.

Can you talk about the unfixed structural flaw that you reference when it comes to the American system and how the thinking has evolved in this space?

Sure.

So the problem is American law was written in an era when the Internet did not exist and was not it could not even have been conceived.

So the case you're referring to is the schooner exchange.

It's from the early eighteen hundreds.

And in that case, a French warship docked in the Philadelphia harbor to escape bad weather and some bailiffs attempted to attach that warship for the payment of debts.

And so that went all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Could you talk about what the components are, how it protects Americans?

Is that technically possible?

Of course, it's technically possible.

But they'd have to force Apple in order to do it.

I mean, so they'd have to force Apple to update its software and hardware in order to do it.

At the moment, Apple's controls, as I understand it, only apply to Apple native applications.

And so it's contacts, it's iMessage.

That's really where those controls can be applied.

What do you think about how that's going to add to the

So as you look at the UK, how would you try and explain to the people who think this is a good thing why they're wrong?

I mean, I'm, I don't, I don't really...

If you think that that's a good thing, I'm not gonna try to explain why you're wrong, right? I think my, my audience is really people who think that it is wrong.

And trying to teach them, uh, how it's wrong, how to think about it, and how to oppose it, and principally, what to replace it with, right? So it's, there's...

If you think that censorship's a good thing, then you're not, you're not a customer for me and my thinking, right? That's not, that's, you're not someone I want to really convince.

Um, but there is a, I think, a growing movement of, of lawyers, of politicians, of grassroots activists in the United Kingdom who understand that censorship is bad, but they don't have the correct frameworks, intellectual frameworks or legal frameworks for thinking about it, because the UK never developed those frameworks.

So there's no domestic system, right? There's no way of systematically analyzing the censorship state in the UK in a manner which is systematic, right, which, which does make sense, where, where you can say, "Listen, here's an alternative to the way we currently do things.

Where, where is the debate here at the moment in the US? Or are there similar challenges?

Give everyone the elevator pitch here.

Sure.

So our story begins in the year of our Lord, 1776, when the United States declared its independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

But moving forward, right, to 1791, comparatively more recently, we enacted this thing called the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

And the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.

What that is meant as a for a as a practical consequence, the judge made principles that have emerged since then is that Americans can pretty much say whatever they want.

Right.

But what happens now? What's the next steps? Right.

How genuinely do you take the U.K. in their push for economic freedom that they claimed in the joint press conferences with Trump's state visit? I'm sure you have an opinion there.

I mean, do you care to elaborate on exactly what you mean by that? Well, come on, we're throwing you a thought.

If you'd like me to riff, I mean, so for context for the people in the room, I'm a free speech, in addition to being a crypto lawyer, I'm a free speech lawyer.

And I've represented companies for the last eight or nine years in U.S. companies in resisting foreign censorship demands.

I have seen censorship demands from every country in the world, you know, not every country, but most of the big ones, nuclear armed and otherwise.

And there has not been a single occasion, not once, where any client of mine has been compelled to remove so much as a comma that they didn't already want to remove as a result of foreign foreign action.

Now, more recently, the United Kingdom enacted a rule called the Online Safety Act.

And the second part of the question, Preston, from what you're hearing, is that one of the reasons why they're setting up rules that really does make DeFi very, very difficult?