The Internet Law Leadership Summit 2026

Yair Cohen presents the UK law and free speech update to the summit of leading US internet law attorneys

From 09:00 until 15:00

At Aria Hotel, Las Vegas

3730 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89158, United States

Aria Hotel Las Vegas

The Internet Law Leadership Summit Committee

About the summit

The Internet Law Leadership Summit is the annual gathering of the leading internet law attorneys in the United States, held at the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas. Attendance is by invitation and is limited to practising lawyers who specialise in internet, technology and digital media law. The 2026 summit opens with a meet-and-greet at the hotel's lobby bar on the evening of Wednesday 30 September; the conference itself runs on Thursday 1 and Friday 2 October and ends at 3pm on the Friday. The organisers are targeting eight hours of continuing legal education credit, with some ethics credit.

Yair Cohen has been a member of the network since 2018 and is its only UK member. The summit is where American lawyers who act for platforms, publishers, website operators and their users compare notes on the year's cases and legislation, and it has become the place where Britain's approach to regulating the internet is explained to the people it now reaches.

Yair Cohen's session: the UK law and free speech update

Yair presents a 30-minute briefing on what Britain has done to the internet since the network last met, written for American lawyers whose clients are now on the receiving end of it. Britain has built a regulator that is paid for by the companies it regulates, most of them American, that serves notices on businesses with no British office by email, and that is backed by criminal offences for speech that would be protected in the United States. The session covers five things:

• Who pays. From the 2026/27 charging year, providers with qualifying worldwide revenue of £250 million or more (and UK revenue of at least £10 million) pay Ofcom's running costs, with fines of up to £18 million or 10 per cent of qualifying worldwide revenue for breaches of the Online Safety Act 2023. Ofcom expects to issue the first invoices in September 2026 (Ofcom, online safety fees and penalties; chapter 2 of the series).
• How far the law reaches. What happened when 4chan and Kiwi Farms sued Ofcom in the United States and a federal judge dismissed the case on 15 September 2026 on sovereign immunity grounds, what a British fine is worth in an American court, and Ofcom's own admission to the House of Lords that most of the £7 million it has imposed has not been paid (statement of counsel on the ruling; chapter 3).
• What happens to people. The offences under which Britain arrests around thirty-four people a day for what they post, the sentences handed down after the 2024 riots, the Graham Linehan arrest at Heathrow, and the repeal Parliament was promised in 2022 and has not delivered (Communications Act 2003, section 127; chapter 4).
• Who decides what you read. The Government's June 2026 green paper proposing that platforms and search engines give prominence to "trusted" news sources, led by the BBC, and the United States Government's request that it be withdrawn (Watch this Space, DCMS green paper; chapter 5).
• What Washington has done and could do. Tariff threats, visa restrictions on foreign officials, the GRANITE and HOMEFRONT bills, the sites that have already left Britain, and what a sensible settlement between the two countries might look like (chapter 6).

Every claim in the session is sourced. The written version is Yair's series Regulated Without Representation, six chapters and an introduction, which begins with Dear America, Ofcom has sent you a bill. Delegates who read it before Las Vegas will get more from the questions.

Why it matters to American lawyers

• A US website or app with British users is within Ofcom's reach whether or not it has a British office, employee or bank account, and the duty to notify Ofcom of qualifying revenue is enforceable in its own right.
• The fee and the fines are calculated on worldwide revenue, not British revenue.
• Geoblocking Britain is a live option for smaller services, and about seventy have already done it; the session covers what that does and does not achieve.
• Britain's speech offences apply to what Americans post if it is read in Britain, and extradition is not the only risk: British clients, British travel and British enforcement partners are.

Also on the 2026 programme

The organisers' agenda for the two days includes Section 230 and artificial intelligence; the use of intellectual property rights as a route around the First Amendment; a structured roundtable on using AI in a law practice; the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the state of the plaintiffs' bar; crypto and bank fraud under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act; AI and copyrightability; the status of immediate anti-SLAPP appeals in the California federal courts; right-of-publicity litigation over voice, face and style; and FTC scrutiny of AI marketing claims. The John Dozier Memorial Lecture is part of the programme.

Practical details

• Dates: Wednesday 30 September to Friday 2 October 2026. Meet-and-greet Wednesday evening at the lobby bar; conference Thursday and Friday, closing at 3pm Friday; dinner on the Thursday night, not included in the fee.
• Venue: Aria Hotel, 3730 S Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89158, United States.
• Registration: by invitation, through the summit's registration page; the fee includes breakfast and lunch on both days.
• Organiser: The Internet Law Leadership Summit Committee.

Yair Cohen has attended the summit since 2018; see the entry for the 2022 summit. To speak to Yair before or after the session, or to ask for the slides, contact the Internet Law Centre on 020 7183 4123 or through the contact page.