LaoDan wrote:god’s abortions
Thanks for my band's new name!
LaoDan wrote:god’s abortions
These heated debates over Section 230 can be traced to one moment in history: Ken Zeran’s Nov. 12, 1997 loss in a lawsuit against America Online.
Zeran had sued America Online after an anonymous troll repeatedly posted vile jokes about the Oklahoma City bombing using Zeran’s first name and home phone number. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of his case, not under the First Amendment, but under the recently passed Section 230.
Until that point, Section 230 had received little attention. But the appellate court concluded that a 26-word provision in the law provides sweeping protections to online services for the words that their users post. Because it was the first federal appellate court to apply the obscure new law, the 4th Circuit’s interpretation quickly prevailed in federal and state courts nationwide.
Ken Zeran’s loss meant that platforms generally are not liable for their decision to keep up—or take down—user content. This legal protection allowed Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Wikipedia, and so many other platforms to base their business models on user-generated content.
To understand why Congress passed Section 230, you first need to understand two court cases that led to its passage. The first was Cubby v. CompuServe, which Kayser had litigated in the early ’90s. In that case, the plaintiff sued CompuServe over an allegedly defamatory newsletter article that was posted to a CompuServe forum, accusing him of being fired from a previous job.
A federal judge concluded that CompuServe was a distributor that had no knowledge or reason to know of the alleged defamation and dismissed the lawsuit. “CompuServe has no more editorial control over such a publication than does a public library, book store, or newsstand, and it would be no more feasible for CompuServe to examine every publication it carries for potentially defamatory statements than it would be for any other distributor to do so,” the judge wrote.
But we are well over two decades past the “what-ifs” for Zeran’s case. He lost, and his loss created the legal system on which so many platforms built their operations.
For instance, it is difficult to conceive of a site like Yelp existing with its current moderation policies under a narrower construction of Section 230. Let’s say a consumer posts on Yelp that a plumber charged $2,000 but did not fix the problem. If Yelp were to face liability upon notice that the review was defamatory, Yelp might feel great pressure to remove the review after receiving a complaint from the plumber. Otherwise, Yelp could face tremendous liability.
The New York Supreme Court ruled that Prodigy was “a publisher” and therefore liable because it had exercised editorial control by moderating some posts and establishing guidelines for impermissible content. If Prodigy had not done any moderation, it might have been granted free speech protections afforded to some distributors of content, like bookstores and newsstands.
Section 230 has allowed the modern internet to flourish. Sites can moderate content — set their own rules for what is and what is not allowed — without being liable for everything posted by visitors.
Whenever there is discussion of repealing or modifying the statute, its defenders, including many technology companies, argue that any alteration could cripple online discussion.
The internet industry has a financial incentive to keep Section 230 intact.
The law has helped build companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars with a lucrative business model
of placing ads next to largely free content from visitors.
. Whenever there is discussion of repealing or modifying the statute, its defenders, including many technology companies, argue that any alteration could cripple online discussion.
Giles wrote:
Agreed, if that is true it will be interesting.
As professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health, I have authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications and currently hold senior positions on the editorial boards of several leading journals.
I am usually accustomed to advocating for positions within the mainstream of medicine, so have been flummoxed to find that, in the midst of a crisis, I am fighting for a treatment that the data fully support but which, for reasons having nothing to do with a correct understanding of the science, has been pushed to the sidelines.
As a result, tens of thousands of patients with COVID-19 are dying unnecessarily. Fortunately, the situation can be reversed easily and quickly.
On May 27, I published an article in the American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE) entitled, "Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk COVID-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis."
That article, published in the world's leading epidemiology journal, analyzed five studies, demonstrating clear-cut and significant benefits to treated patients, plus other very large studies that showed the medication safety.
Since publication of my May 27 article, seven more studies have demonstrated similar benefit. In a lengthy follow-up letter, also published by AJE, I discuss these seven studies and renew my call for the immediate early use of hydroxychloroquine in high-risk patients.
These seven studies include: an additional 400 high-risk patients treated by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, with zero deaths; four studies totaling almost 500 high-risk patients treated in nursing homes and clinics across the U.S., with no deaths;
a controlled trial of more than 700 high-risk patients in Brazil, with significantly reduced risk of hospitalization and two deaths among 334 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine;
and another study of 398 matched patients in France, also with significantly reduced hospitalization risk. Since my letter was published, even more doctors have reported to me their completely successful use.
In the future, I believe this misbegotten episode regarding hydroxychloroquine will be studied by sociologists of medicine as a classic example of how extra-scientific factors overrode clear-cut medical evidence.
But for now, reality demands a clear, scientific eye on the evidence and where it points. For the sake of high-risk patients, for the sake of our parents and grandparents, for the sake of the unemployed, for our economy and for our polity, especially those disproportionally affected, we must start treating immediately.
Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhD, is professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health.
The views expressd in this article are the writer's own.
LaoDan wrote:
For those who equate abortions with killing young innocents who have no say in the matter, then there are additional arguments that could be made. First, an embryo or fetus could be considered a parasite (feeding off of the host mother)
Those who believe in God, and that God has a plan for all situations, should therefore assume that these situations are God’s will.
LaoDan wrote:windwalker wrote:Is not your God also responsible for the virus.
Not if the virus was deliberately created in a lab in China!
Trick wrote:windwalker wrote:Not if the virus was deliberately created in a lab in China!
How if it was created in an US lab then ...?
US urged to explain military lab shutdown
The Fort Detrick laboratory that handles high-level disease-causing material, such as Ebola, in Fredrick, Maryland was shut after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a cease and desist order to the organization in July, 2019 according to local media.
....
For example, "a large-scale 'influenza' killed more than 10,000 people" in the US in August 2019 following the closure; and the COVID-19 epidemic broke out globally in February 2020 after the US organized Event 201 - A Global Pandemic Exercise - in October 2019.
The Fort Detrick horror: a closer look at the US’ largest biochemical weapons research center
For years the public had known little about what was going on inside USAMRIID. Its nearby citizens, however, had made frequent accusations and claims, saying their health was largely harmed by its biochemical pollution.
In 2006, a petition that asked local senators to take a further look at a possible "cancer cluster" near the institute got more than 14,000 signs on US petition website Change.org.
Randy White, a resident who initiated the petition, denounced the "reckless practices" of the US army who "buried dangerous chemical weapons" at Fort Detrick near their home, which he said had made over 2,500 people, including his wife and daughter, die from "a rare form of cancer."
All this time, the US army has continued to block calls for accountability, dismissing hundreds of health claims from sick residents, White wrote in the petition.
...
"Worse still, they have the 'power' to bypass the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) restrictions and public scrutiny," said the expert, adding that the US has been obstructing negotiations for a BWC protocol with a verification regime for some 20 years.
While keeping outside international norms, the US has been maintaining the world's largest bio-defense systems, increasing bio-security risks to the people of its country and the world, he added.
A previous investigation reveals that "hundreds of lab mistakes and safety near-miss incidents have occurred" at US biological institutes in recent years, reported USA Today in 2015.
The safety and management of the biological labs erected in its homeland and overseas have been a great global concern as multiple complaints have been filed against these biological labs for causing health problems,
Army targets COVID-19 vaccine by end of year, human testing in summer
In January, after the virus’ genetic makeup was published, the more than 700 Army scientists, researchers, and staff at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick, Maryland, began working day and night to develop medical countermeasures against COVID-19.
The WRAIR team, less than an hour away, just outside of the nation’s capital, also started racing against the clock to develop a vaccine candidate to beat the novel coronavirus.
Army targets COVID-19 vaccine by end of year, human testing in summer
Bao wrote:Trick wrote:windwalker wrote:Not if the virus was deliberately created in a lab in China!
LaoDan wrote:windwalker wrote:Is not your God also responsible for the virus.
Not if the virus was deliberately created in a lab in China!
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