Last month, I noted that UCLA Law School professor Doug Lichtman has a wonderful new monthly podcast called the “Intellectual Property Colloquium.” This month’s show features two giants in the field of tech policy — George Washington Law Professor Daniel Solove and Santa Clara Law Professor Eric Goldman –- discussing online privacy, defamation, and intermediary liability. More specifically, in separate conversations, Solove and Goldman both consider the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which shields Internet intermediaries from liability for the speech and expression of their users. Sec. 230 is the subject of hot debate these days and Solove and Goldman provide two very different perspectives about the law and its impact.

Goldman calls Sec. 230 “pure cyberspace exceptionalism” in the sense that it breaks from traditional tort norms governing intermediary liability. But he argues that this new online version of intermediary liability (which is extremely limited in scope) encourages more robust speech and expression than the older, offline version of liability (which was far more strict). I completely agree with Eric Goldman, but I respect the arguments that Lichtman and Solove raise about the privacy and defamation problems raised by the purist approach that Goldman and I favor.

Goldman also does a nice job dissecting the Roomates.com and Craigslist.com cases. And Lichtman brings up the JuicyCampus.com case during the conclusion. These are important cases for the future of Sec. 230 and online liability. Incidentally, there’s also an interesting conversation between Lichtman and Solove (around the 32:00 mark) about an issue that Alex Harris and Tim Lee have been raising here about the nature of online contracts and the perils of messy EULAs / Terms of Service (TOS).

These are two absolutely terrific conversations. Very in-depth and very highly recommended. Listen here.

[Note: I recently reviewed Daniel Solove’s important new book, Understanding Privacy, here.]

We’ve failed to keep our podcast alive here at the TLF — and I apologize about that — but there are still a lot of good tech policy-related podcasts out there for you to listen to. Here’s a new one that sounds very promising. It’s called the “Intellectual Property Colloquium” podcast, and it’s hosted by the brilliant Doug Lichtman, a professor of law at UCLA Law School.

The first show features a discussion that took place in one of Prof. Lichtman’s classes in which the always-interesting Fred Von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) begins by talking about the controversial Cablevision DVR case and then transitions into copyright law and infringement more generally. Doug jumps into the conversation about 12 minutes and needles Fred with a litany of excellent questions that really get the debate going. Whenever Doug and Fred go at it, it is a real intellectual clash of the titans.

The upcoming shows look just as good. Next up is a debate between Stacey Byrnes of NBC-Universal and Tim Wu of Columbia University about the DMCA notice-and-takedown process. The November show will include Dan Solove talking about “Privacy in a Networked World.” [I am just finishing up his important new book, Understanding Privacy, and I will be posting a review of it here soon.] And the December show is called “Everyone Hates DRM,” and is set to include Ed Felton of Princeton University versus Dean Marks of Warner Brothers. That should be a interesting conversation.