Disclaimer: I did not choose the title of the video, although perhaps I should have expected something a touch sensationalist to spice up a technical legal interview given to an editor-at-large of the Sun.
Anyway, it’s a fun interview. Enjoy!
I was also on GB News with Jacob Rees-Mogg:
Please find below the final version of the GRANITE Act, filed in Wyoming and close to introduction. The only current obstacle to finalization is fiscal impact analysis, which is underway.
We anticipate to have that completed and the bill fully finalized, numbered, introduced, and up on the legislature’s website, on or about January 23rd.
It has come quite a long way from the blog post that launched this effort back in October. We are going to try to get this bill enacted this session. If enacted, it will enter into force on July 1st, 2026, three days before America celebrates 250 years of independence from the United Kingdom.
As the bill protects not just the speech of Wyoming residents but also speech on Wyoming servers, Americans anywhere will be able to avail themselves of its protection.
I can’t think of a better birthday present for our country.
With the UK threatening to ban X today, this podcast has been released at a very relevant time. Was recorded a couple of weeks back.
As many of you know, I represent every single target of formal enforcement under the Online Safety Act in the United States pro bono.
One of these clients, SaSu, has already blocked the United Kingdom. SaSu, however, is one of the reasons that the Online Safety Act was enacted, so much so that it was the canonical example that the UK’s Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, chose to raise in front of the President of the United States when explaining why the Online Safety Act exists. The failure of the Online Safety Act to finish the job and destroy this website – which is U.S. based – has caused a bit of a stir in the UK’s political circles of late.
As a result of that political kerfuffle, I received an extraordinary letter (uploaded at the bottom of this post) from the UK communications regulator, Ofcom, on January the 6th, purporting to “provide your client with an update on our ongoing investigation” into the following matters:
This is a bit of a bait-and-switch. My client elected to block the United Kingdom in order to remove itself from the scope of the Online Safety Act. Ofcom deemed this satisfactory and, on October 13th, told my client, and the world, as much:
Following this, the UK’s NGO sector, which campaigned for the Online Safety Act for years on the basis that SaSu was capable of being destroyed by the Act, went apoplectic (as detailed in The Ofcom Files: Part II), called for the forum operators to be arrested, and launched a national media campaign. On the same day, Ofcom promptly appeared to abandon its much-vaunted political independence and reopened the file.
And, this week, we get the letter at the bottom of this post from the regulator, combined with a letter from a cross-party group of UK MPs calling on the regulator to get involved.
We responded to Ofcom’s letter.
And I responded to those MPs.
This letter follows a fiery speech from the Secretary of State for DSIT in the House of Commons last month, who vowed to accelerate enforcement against my client during PMQs late last month.
I would like to make a couple of observations about Ofcom’s letter that I find, frankly, a little disturbing.
First, Ofcom appears to be poised to demand of my client, which, I remind you, has blocked the UK, that it must nonetheless comply with all of the Online Safety Act’s censorship duties and risk reporting duties, enforcement of which Ofcom effectively waived with its public announcement on October 13th but has only reversed under political pressure. Otherwise, Ofcom tells us, it will… *checks notes* get a court order that blocks my client from the UK. Or, rather, blocks the site from the UK *a second time,* because my client has already done this voluntarily.
As a so-called “independent regulator,” Ofcom is not supposed to reverse itself under political pressure. Here, it appears to have done so. And the punishment it seeks to impose, nationwide blocking, has no safety rationale and would be purely performative, since the desired outcome was achieved through voluntary compliance after Ofcom first threatened my client, almost a year ago.
Second, in the absence of any concrete evidence that my client has done anything wrong, and until this week Ofcom’s stated public position was that it had not, Ofcom has taken the extraordinary step of, once again in this matter, using regulatory correspondence to take pot shots at opposing counsel.
Further, as part of our investigation, we have noted comments from your blog dated 6 November 2025 discussing Sanctioned Suicide’s case, in which you stated that “the only way to counter [Ofcom’s] strategy is to deny Ofcom a clean precedent” and “ensure that any “orders” [Ofcom] give to Americans are visibly and publicly refused”.
Ofcom goes further, in their correspondence, stating:
it appears clear from your blog above that you intend to advise your client not to take steps to comply with its obligations under the Act or with decisions that may be issued by Ofcom;
I remind Ofcom that these are my words, not the words of my voluntarily cooperative client, and that I am not a regulated user-to-user service with links to the UK. Ofcom is in no position to chastise an American lawyer for his choices as an advocate.
Ofcom might purport to regulate the Internet, but it doesn’t regulate me. In this case, I am regulated by the Connecticut Supreme Court.
My duty is clear: the Court expects and indeed requires me to be a zealous advocate for my client’s interests and to protect my client’s rights using any and all expedient means. In this case, with a nation-state opponent and a financially defenseless American client, public commentary, consisting of alerting the American political and legal systems to Ofcom’s extraterritorial adventurism and warning the American legal profession about Ofcom’s methods, is one of those means.
I also remind Ofcom that it has no clue what I advise my clients. Those communications are privileged and that privilege is not waived. I am sure they will try to use my public statements in their court application for a blocking order. If they do so, I hope a judge of the High Court has the good sense to see this conduct for what it is, sua sponte, as my American clients have no intention of appearing to explain their constitutionally protected conduct to an English tribunal.
I understand Ofcom might be a little upset that their project has been delayed for an entire year at the American shoreline by a handful of American lawyers working for free, an effort that continues and ensures that no American – no matter how controversial their speech and regardless of ability to pay – who is engaged in constitutionally protected speech and conduct will go without a defense.
Ofcom seems to be willing, at this juncture, to make it personal – I’ve never seen a regulator criticize the other side’s lawyer for his personal opinions in formal enforcement correspondence, or try to spin a reservation of rights letter or a blog post into an X-ray device purporting to see what advice has been given within the seal of the attorney-client relationship. But this is no ordinary case; the UK bet the house, politically speaking, on this unworkable censorship law taking out this one target, and, as expected by anyone who understands how the Internet or cross-border law practice works, it isn’t working and the target remains. The regulator has been given the unenviable task of making it work anyway.
Now, following NGO pressure, Parliamentary pressure, and a completely unexplainable policy reversal that coincides neatly with that pressure, the enforcement action bears the unwashable stain of political interference. This comes to me as no surprise; all censorship of unpopular speech invariably is political, something Americans understand very well – and which the First Amendment was designed to forever abolish in our country. Here, though, Ofcom’s about-face under pressure from UK pressure groups, and having that pressure compounded by direct pressure from the House of Commons, far from intimidating Americans in this matter, only confirms to us that our position is right.
We don’t tolerate politically motivated censorship in America. It does, of course, occur from time to time. When it does, our legal system gives American lawyers the tools we need to repel it. The fact that Parliament itself now calls for an American to be destroyed for the simple exercise of their constitutional rights confirms to me that the fight against foreign censorship is one we must win.
I was very pleased to be invited onto Taylor Lorenz’s podcast to provide a sitrep on the fight to keep the world’s Internet free. Check it out over on YouTube: