Holding Internet Service Providers Accountable

Internet service providers are today largely immune from liability for their role in the creation and propagation of worms, viruses, and other forms of malicious computer code. In this Essay, we question that state of affairs. Our purpose is not to weigh in on the details—for example, whether liability should sound in negligence or strict liability, or whether liability is in this instance best implemented by statute or via gradual common law development. Rather, our aim is to challenge the recent trend in the courts and Congress away from liability and toward complete immunity for Internet service providers. In our view, such immunity is difficult to defend on policy grounds, and sharply inconsistent with conventional tort law principles. Internet service providers control the gateway through which Internet pests enter and reenter the public computer system. They should therefore bear some responsibility for stopping these pests before they spread and for helping to identify individuals who originate malicious code in the first place

Recombinant luciferase-expressing human cytomegalovirus (CMV) for evaluation of CMV inhibitors

Recombinant Towne CMV expressing luciferase under the control of CMV-DNA polymerase (POL) or the late pp28 (UL99) promoters were evaluated for potential application in high-throughput screening of anti-viral compounds. POL-and pp28-luciferase displayed maximal expression 48 and 72 hours post infection, respectively. The pp28-luciferase virus achieved a wider dynamic range of luciferase expression (6-7 logs) and was selected for testing of inhibition by five anti-viral compounds. Luciferase expression highly correlated with plaque reduction and real-time PCR. The pp28-luciferase reporter system is rapid, reproducible, and highly sensitive. It may be applied to screening of novel anti-CMV compounds

Artemisinin-Derived Dimers Have Greatly Improved Anti-Cytomegalovirus Activity Compared to Artemisinin Monomers

Artesunate, an artemisinin-derived monomer, was reported to inhibit Cytomegalovirus (CMV) replication. We aimed to compare the in-vitro anti-CMV activity of several artemisinin-derived monomers and newly synthesized artemisinin dimers.Four artemisinin monomers and two novel artemisinin-derived dimers were tested for anti-CMV activity in human fibroblasts infected with luciferase-tagged highly-passaged laboratory adapted strain (Towne), and a clinical CMV isolate. Compounds were evaluated for CMV inhibition and cytotoxicity.Artemisinin dimers effectively inhibited CMV replication in human foreskin fibroblasts and human embryonic lung fibroblasts (EC(50) for dimer sulfone carbamate and dimer primary alcohol 0.06+/-0.00 microM and 0.15+/-0.02 microM respectively, in human foreskin fibroblasts) with no cytotxicity at concentrations required for complete CMV inhibition. All four artemisinin monomers (artemisinin, artesunate, artemether and artefanilide) shared a similar degree of CMV inhibition amongst themselves (in microM concentrations) which was significantly less than the inhibition achieved with artemisinin dimers (P<0.0001). Similar to monomers, inhibition of CMV with artemisinin dimers appeared early in the virus life cycle as reflected by decreased expression of the immediate early (IE1) protein.Artemisinin dimers are potent and non-cytotoxic inhibitors of CMV replication. These compounds should be studied as potential therapeutic agents for the treatment of CMV infection in humans

Ethnicity, voter alignment and political party affiliation - an African case: Zambia

Conventional wisdom holds that ethnicity provides the social cleavage for voting behav-iour and party affiliation in Africa. Because this is usually inferred from aggregate data of national election results, it might prove to be an ecological fallacy. The evidence based on individual data from an opinion survey in Zambia suggests that ethnicity matters for voter alignment and even more so for party affiliation, but it is certainly not the only factor. The analysis also points to a number of qualifications which are partly methodology-related. One is that the degree of ethnic voting can differ from one ethno-political group to the other depending on various degrees of ethnic mobilisation. Another is that if smaller eth-nic groups or subgroups do not identify with one particular party, it is difficult to find a significant statistical correlation between party affiliation and ethnicity - but that does not prove that they do not affiliate along ethnic lines.Wahlverhalten und Mitgliedschaft in politischen Parteien Afrikas ist nur wenig untersucht worden. Gewöhnlich wird argumentiert, dass Ethnizität als soziale Konfliktlinie das Wahlverhalten und die Parteienmitgliedschaft strukturiert. Da dieses Argument auf hoch aggregierten Wahldaten beruht, kann hier ein ökologischer Fehlschuss vorliegen. Die vorliegende Analyse beruht deshalb auf individuellen Umfragedaten aus Sambia. Das Ergebnis ist, dass Ethnizität tatsächlich eine Rolle für das Wahlverhalten und die Parteienmitgliedschaft spielt, aber keineswegs den einzigen Erklärungsfaktor darstellt. Die Analyse offenbart zudem eine Reihe von Einschränkungen und Qualifizierungen, die teilweise methodischer Natur sind. Eine ist, dass ethnisches Wahlverhalten und Parteienmitgliedschaft von einer ethnischen Gruppe zur anderen unterschiedlich ist, dass, wenn sich kleinere ethnische Gruppen oder Untergruppen mit keiner Partei identifizieren, es schwierig wird, statistisch signifikante Korrelationen zu finden - was indessen noch nicht beweist, dass Ethnizität keine Rolle spielt

Balance-of-Powers Arguments and the Structural Constitution

Balance-of-powers arguments are ubiquitous in judicial opinions and academic articles that address separation-of-powers disputes over the president\u27s removal authority, power to disregard statutes, authority to conduct foreign wars, and much else. However, the concept of the balance of powers has never received a satisfactory theoretical treatment. This Essay examines possible theories of the balance of powers and rejects them all as unworkable and normatively questionable. Judges and scholars should abandon the balance-of-powers metaphor and instead address directly whether bureaucratic innovation is likely to improve policy outcomes

Monetary and fiscal policies for a finite planet

Current macroeconomic policy promotes continuous economic growth. Unemployment, poverty and debt are associated with insufficient growth. Economic activity depends upon the transformation of natural materials, ultimately returning to the environment as waste. Current levels of economic throughput exceed the planet\u27s carrying capacity. As a result of poorly constructed economic institutions, society faces the unacceptable choice between ecological catastrophe and human misery. A transition to a steady-state economy is required, characterized by a rate of throughput compatible with planetary boundaries. This paper contributes to the development of a steady-state economy by addressing US monetary and fiscal policies. A steady-state monetary policy would support counter-cyclical, debt-free vertical money creation through the public sector, in ways that contribute to sustainable well-being. The implication for a steady-state fiscal policy is that any lending or spending requires a careful balance of recovery of money, not as a means of revenue, but as an economic imperative to meet monetary policy goals. A steady-state fiscal policy would prioritize targeted public goods investments, taxation of ecological bads and economic rent and implementation of progressive tax structures. Institutional innovations are considered, including common asset trusts, to regulate throughput, and a public monetary trust, to strictly regulate money supply

Poison in the Wine? Tracing Gats-Minus Commitments in Regional Trade Agreements

Commitments in regional trade agreements (RTAs) that fall short of the same countries' obligations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) are a relatively frequent phenomenon. However, they have gone widely unnoticed in the literature to date and drawn very little attention in relevant WTO fora either. Nevertheless, 'minus commitments' are potentially poisonous and, for various reasons, would deserve close attention. Given the broad definitional scope of the GATS, extending inter alia to commercial presence, such commitments may impinge upon the rights of third-country investors in the RTA economies. Their existence casts doubts on the legal status of the respective agreements under the GATS and can have severe implications for the trading system overall. If not complemented by comprehensive Most-favoured-Nation clauses, the RTAs concerned are disconnected from the WTO and virtually impossible to multilateralize. Based on a review of some 80,000 commitments in 66 agreements, this study seeks to develop a reasonably comprehensive picture of the frequency of 'minus commitments' and their dosage in terms of sectors, measures and modes of supply. It also discusses potential remedies from a WTO perspective