Data-Mining Ban Struck Down By US Supreme Court

smitty777 writes "The Supreme Court struck down in Sorrell vs IMS Health a Vermont law banning data mining which has been in place since 2007. The court ruled that the data on medications prescribed by doctors is protected by the First Amendment and can be used for marketing by the pharmaceutical companies. This follows similar declarations in Maine and New Hampshire."

Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[Nimey]

We can expect more and more of this because he replaced two fairly liberal judges with very conservative ones.

Not that liberal judges are a panacea - they all voted in favor of eminent domain in Kelo v. New London - but they tend to not believe in corporate power so much.

Strange definition of conservative

[Kupfernigk]

In the US today, "Liberal" and "Conservative" seem to have reversed meaning. You would expect a Conservative to say "this (data mining) didn't exist when the Constitution was written, and therefore should come under States Rights. And, anyway, we should be very wary of allowing any part of the community to bring about social changes that may affect the majority in ways we can't yet predict". And you would expect a Liberal - i.e. a free-market, laissez-faire capitalist - to say "if they want to do it let them, and then if it goes wrong someone can sue."

But in fact "Conservative" now seems to be used to mean "someone who sells the intent of the Constitution to the highest bidder", and "Liberal" means someone who wants the Government not to interfere so much in people's private lives and their privacy - which I imagine the Founding Fathers would be in favor of.

In the late 80s it was the Democrats - Lloyd Bentsen in particular - that were in bed with Big Oil. Now it's the Republicans. Why the switch?

Re:Big Corporation

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

This isn't a new phenomenon. In the Middle Ages, Barons and Earls constantly vied with kings for supremacy over the nation. In the early modern era, merchants literally seized control of certain states, and corporations like the East India Company rules territories as vast as India.

The price of freedom might be eternal vigilance, but the price of control is simply a lot of money.

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[rtb61]

Actually conservatives by definition seek no change, so at the time of the founding of the US, which all the current rank of conservatives pretend is about them, the conservatives at the time of founding of the US government were of course, Royalists.

Conservatives do not normally call for a limited scope of Federal Government, in fact conservatives, likes lots of regulations to 'limit' the actions of others, whether those others are exploiting or polluting the shared environment or in others ways seeking to change the shared socio-economic environment. Your are confusing conservative with libertarian and or exploitative.

The welfare state is about limiting the affects of downturns in the economy (it provides an economic cushion and prevents an economic death spiral) and of course reducing crime brought about by desperation and a lack interest in the shared economy resulting from exclusion from it. Of course the libertarians and the exploitative abhors the welfare state because it prevents the ruthless exploitation of those around them in economic downturns, this with total disregard for the impact upon the shared socio-economic environment, the prime driver being the fulfilling of personal greeds and lusts.

No matter how loud the current rank of pretend 'conservatives" scream they are religious conservatives, they are not, they are quite simply lying pseudo religious libertarian exploiters.