Data-Mining Ban Struck Down By US Supreme Court 176
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."
Big Corporation (Score:5, Insightful)
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Alternatively: Information wants to be free.
Re:Big Corporation (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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The Boston Tea Party was a protest against the East India Company as much as it was against British Rule and taxes.
That's something they don't like to teach at school any more...
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The price of freedom might be eternal vigilance, but the price of control is simply a lot of money.
Sig-snarf'd! Nice.
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As I read the case, my understanding is that the data is already out there and available to the public (miners, corporations, journalists, me) via the pharmacies who are collecting the info dur
Long-term damage from the Bush Admin (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm mostly a conservative, and I don't recognize these rulings as conservative. These are corporatist, which I mostly view as a form of treason.
Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm mostly a conservative, and I don't recognize these rulings as conservative. These are corporatist
What's the difference?
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What I mean by political conservatism is a preference for limited scope of the federal government, an general aversion to a welfare state, and a preference for limited taxation. Also, it's underpinnings are a general distrust in the competence of central planning, and an assumption that power corrupts.
None of that entails pretending that corporations are persons, which I think is the root of this current nonsense.
Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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This description would better fit the terms 'Paleo-Conservative, Libertarian, or Classical Liberal' these days. 'Conservative' has come to mean corporatist, supportive of the military-industrial complex, and for big government to control people on moral issues and vices. Unfortunately, the Republican Party, on a national level, has become Conservative.
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I don't think in this case corporate personhood is behind this "nonsense". Rather, it is one of those situations where the naive interpretation of one right (the right to free speech) conflicts with another right (the right to privacy).
Nobody really believes in a "right to free speech" that allows you to say anything you want, any time you want. For example, a lawyer can't divulge confidences his clients make to him because somebody offers to pay him for it. As an IT professional for many years, I've often
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Um, in what way is "corporatist" not a philosophy of "limited scope of the federal government?" Doesn't limiting the scope of the federal government mean limiting its ability to regulate industry?
Not to mention limiting its ability to bless interstate corporations, which are a legal entity. Otherwise, corporations would have to do so separately in every state where they operate.
Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin (Score:4, Informative)
Um, in what way is "corporatist" not a philosophy of "limited scope of the federal government?"
Corporations are creations of government by definition. They don't exist without government protection.
Here's a limited government position: governments should not be in the business of creating and protecting corporations. See, that was easy, wasn't it?
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The Lifecycle of Conservative Politics.
Step 1) Conservative voters fight tooth and nail to get people that espouse certain libertarian/objectivist/fundie christian philosophies elected to office/appointed to lifelong judicial positions.
Step 2) These people do . . .exactly what the philosophies they espoused implied they would do. The results are entirely predictable, devastating to the economy, destructive to the environment, creating about one millionaire for every few thousand people it drives into povert
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You may want to look at your party John Roberts has NEVER voted against a corporation's interest.
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I'm actually trying to draw a distinction between the Republican party, and conservatism.
The Republicans have gone so insane that, sadly, I find myself far closer to Libertarians than Republicans.
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or accurate.
the issue is not conservative or liberal, it is indeed a concern that this pro-corporate viewpoint has gotten out of hand.
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This is wrong... both parties are bought out by corporations... it's just they are slightly different groups of corporations. Also the Republicans are more open (and often proud) about it.
Almost everything in the corporate media is focuses on the liberal vs. conservative sideshow... they have an interest in the country turning into a corporate state.
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Well no. The entire GOP is wholely owned by corporate interests at this point. The buying of Democrats is a case-by-case basis (Banks own Dodd for example). It's a significant difference. The two parties are not (yet) equivalent.
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Two other observations -
A) the Democrat that's not bought by corporate sector 'X' will actually go toe to toe with the Democrat whose state depends on that sector, and
B) even the Democrat that is under corporate influence becomes independent when things have *obviously* gotten out of hand - as an example witness the Dodd Frank act.
From the viewpoint of the corporate lobbyist Republicans have the 'virtue' that they stay bought and stick together no matter what.
Pug
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The liberals love to promote laws written by the RIAA and Hollywood. How is that not corporatist?
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No "liberal" I'm aware of does. At least none I know personally. I'm constantly amazed at all these things that conservatives say "liberals" support. Not all moms trying to "protect the children!" via RIAA and such are liberal. I wouldn't even say a majority were.
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No TRUE conservative is a corporate fascist. But all REPUBLICANS (at least elected ones, not necessarily voters) are. Republicans are not conservative. They're radical right-wing corporatists with a military fetishist. They're every bit the big-government people they rant against, they just think big governement should come in the form of a military policing bedrooms and wombs and invading scores of other countries.
No TRUE Conservative could stomach voting for a modern day Republican.
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Because it isn't private info - it's just data on what kinds prescriptions are filled, they aren't tied to individual people.
The first amendment issue comes in because the data is already publicly available. The state was saying that companies weren't allowed to use it to gather marketing information.
Strange definition of conservative (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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Lloyd Bentsen was a Texan. It's sort of complicated, but in the late 80s/early 90s the Republican leadership in the House prevailed on conservative Democrats in Texas and the rest of the south -- people who were very conservative but were Democrats for historical reasons -- to switch to the Republican party and/or to withhold their votes for the Democratic Speaker when organizing the House. This effort gave the House to the Republicans in 1994, and the decades-long Democratic control of the House has be
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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.
Not really, since I doubt there's anyone in the government who falls under that description, but that word sure gets thrown around a lot anyway...
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That's because "Liberal" and "Conservative" are basically meaningless.
Consider, for instance, the recent issue of the US war in Afghanistan. The 'liberals' Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid support it, along with the 'conservative' John McCain, John Boehner, and Mitt Romney. Opposed to the war are 'liberal' Dennis Kucinich and 'conservative' Ron Paul. Or another example: the Sierra Club really liked self-described conservative Senator Bob Smith (R-NH) back when he was in office, be
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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.
Actually, it is much simpler and sadder than this - in the US these definitions are really used for social issues only. Both major political parties are wings of the multinational corporate government. The conservative and liberal tags no longer denote any difference of opinion on most real issues and both sides are going to prefer larger and stronger federal governments. These monikers simply give an idea on where a person might stand on something like abortion or gay marriage. To find differences of o
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Democrat: Wants Big Government interfering with individual citizens economically via taxes (attacks financial freedom). Their apparent end-goal is for every dollar earned to be taxed and then have the Government ration out all services. Essentially, Communism/Communists.
Republicans: Want Big Government interfering with individual
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Because these have always been relative terms. Even left wing and right wing are subjective, as these terms were initially describing post revolutionary French legislature which just doesn't apply very well to other times and countries.
In the recent past in the US you could see that conservative legislators tended to be mostly influenced by and favorable to corporations, whereas Liberal legislators instead favored or were influenced by unions. These has changed in the present mostly because of extremely w
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Conservatives today believe in limited government and states rights, at the base of the movement, not all "Republicans" are conservative, of course.
I'd say none of the elected Republicans or the GOP fit that description. They may pay lip-service to "limited government", but they don't believe it and certainly don't act on it. Never in the last 30 years has any Republican actually implemented more limited government, or anything even approaching fiscal responsibility. Quite the opposite. They say one thi
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He's basically a moderate Republican from back when there was such a thing.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
"On June 23, 2006, the first anniversary of the original decision, President George W. Bush issued an executive order instructing the federal government to restrict the use of eminent domain '...for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken.'"
Sounds like Bush didn't entirely agree with it.
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Of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Where individuals and corporations collide, in the US the corporations win.
Supreme Court Decision Disasters keep mounting... (Score:4, Insightful)
This after Citizens United and several other recent decisions...
Man, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito are three of the worst things to happen to the Supreme Court in recent memory. Ugh.
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This can be positive, though. If we think in terms of government, it helps push for more open government and governmental data as a freedom of speech issue, even in cases where certain things are "copyrighted" by governments, such as NYC subway maps.
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It was only decided correctly if you consider a corporation to be a person.
Weather corporations are persons or should be persons is, to be fair, worth a debate of its own. Even speaking as a progressive, it'd be a good debate to have.
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No, I'm saying we shouldn't consider it Sierra Nevada wanting to publish the book. We should consider it what it is: the owners of Sierra Nevada are using their combined resources to publish a book.
The company does not have rights on its own, the people who form the company have rights. Forming the company does not give them any extra rights. It just makes it easier to refer to that company, do business under a certain name, etc., rather than naming all the people who form the company.
Right now, a person
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1) There ought to be a difference between speech by individuals and corporations as corporations are a "legal fiction" and not real persons. When you elevate corporations to "people" you essentially give them MORE rights than real people because they can be such a potent concentration of power. The writers of the constitution actually knew this... it was never their intent for companies to have more power than individuals. They were very wary of corporations because of their dealings with the East India
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If you think there should be a difference pass a Constitutional amendment. Again, the 1st amendment just mentions "speech" without any qualification as to whom is speaking.
Corporations, while a legal entity, are still collections of people. I fail to see how a collection of people should lack the free speech rights of a singular person.
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Free speech liberals don't like is free speech. Free speech conservatives don't like is "obscenity". Funny how that works out.
I'd happily support an absolutist position on free speech, if the courts were consistant about it. But they are completely hypocritical. "God hates fags" == protected speech. "Bong hits for Jesus" == unprotected.
It's like they're not even trying to hide their bias anymore.
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Evidently they like Westboro more than they like pot smokers.
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You're not even looking at the facts and taking them at face value. Frederick was an adult, was not on school grounds, and was not under school custody at the time he made the "bong hits for jesus" statement.
If you look at the legal reasoning and take it at face value, it doesn't get any better. Roberts said that the speech "reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use". Well hell yes it did! Promotoing civil disobedience is political, and therefore, protected speech.
The only possible reason for the
Ever heard of HIPA? (Score:1)
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HIPAA is specific in allowing information to be gathered for research as long as identifying information of the patient is removed. Since this involves the names of the prescribing doctors and not the patients, HIPAA doesn't really apply.
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From the name of a prescribing doctor I have the potential range of patients.
From the potential range of patients, that can be narrowed down by medication.
From medication, it's usually not too difficult to find a person, because many people will talk about that kind of stuff openly, or someone that knows the situation will, and with today's internet, we've seen that people blab all too often, myself included.
All it takes is a little logic and research, and you have violated someone's medical privacy.
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From the name of a prescribing doctor I have the potential range of patients.
From the potential range of patients, that can be narrowed down by medication.
From medication, it's usually not too difficult to find a person, because many people will talk about that kind of stuff openly, or someone that knows the situation will, and with today's internet, we've seen that people blab all too often, myself included.
All it takes is a little logic and research, and you have violated someone's medical privacy.
That is the worst misunderstanding of HIPPA I have ever seen. Your strawman failed with the very first statement.
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There is no strawman here. This is a simple exercise, one which I have tested and was EASILY able to find references to medications and my own brother (a particular steroid, in fact.)
I think your name does you justice. Perhaps you should actually try my idea before dismissing it as something it isn't.
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Care to rephrase that please?
Logical conclusion of this (Score:3, Insightful)
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They'd have to figure out who the insured is, first, as well as their relatives are -- I'm not sure it'd be impossible with a sufficient quantity of data, but the patient's name gets stripped out of the data in question. I think this is a bad idea for other reasons, but at least there's that. FTFA:
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That would be discrimination based on genetics, which is against the law [nih.gov].
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You can stick that stupid 'for now' phrase on anything you want, because EVERYTHING is 'for now'. You're not allowed to murder people - for now. You are allowed to exist - for now.
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So has there been a bill introduced to repeal that law? Has there been discussion of repealing that law? No, and no. The law passed the house 414-1 (only nay vote was Ron Paul), and the senate 95-0 (two of the 5 people who did not vote were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), and was signed by President Bush. That is as close to universal agreement as you are ever going to see in government. This is not going to be repealed 'because some corporation wants it'.
It is completely asinine to say that there a
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It is already against the law to discriminate based on genetics. You claim that the FCRA is 'violated as a matter of course' - do you have any actual evidence of that? [nih.gov]
And before you say 'well just because there is a law against it doesn't mean companies won't do it', why would a law against data mining mean companies won't do it? If you're so paranoid as to believe that people are going to discriminate against you based on genetics, in spite of laws against that, then don't give your genes to anyone, ev
How does this impact the Roe V Wade ruling (Score:3)
Now what I wonder is how this impacts the Roe V Wade decision as I am not a legal scholar nor do I pretend to be one on /. but to me it seems that this ruling clashes because of the right to privacy which was found in that decision. The Vermont law wasn't outside that right, but supposedly violated the free speech rights of the corporations. It is rather sad commentary that it seems corporations now have more rights than individuals. I am not trying to troll but if one really wanted to stir the pot with this ruling just mention that it would allow data mining of individuals who have taken the morning after pill or other similar ones (I don't know if they exist).
I find the law to be fascinating being that I am engineer. this is mostly due to how it seem the law claims to be fair, and only concerned with the facts, but never seems to be. Additionally I get the impression that there really isn't much logic in how justice is handed out as there are very different ruling from different courts on the same issue.Maybe I should submit my resume the next time a spot opens up on the U.S. Supreme Court.
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I think the key is the de-personalized data that is being used. We can surmise that they were not talking about Patient X using Medication Y showing up in an ad. While that's not analogous, there probably is a yet-to-be defined area between the areas of doctor-patient privacy, personal rights, and information first amendment rights. I doubt it will ever be totally settled except on a case-by-case basis.
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Well, if I had any faith that this data wouldn't be used for marketing shenanigans, I'd be leaning towards saying that this is good data to have. There are a number of interesting trends that I can think of off the top of my head that could be investigated with this data.
Unfortunately, 'selling data' kind of implies that it's going straight to marketing.
Selling stuff is speech? (Score:3)
Oh that explains a LOT. So every time a legislator or a judge sells a law or a ruling, it's free speech they are exercising... on all our behalves. And of course, by this standard, laws against prostitution are all unconstitutional as their selling themselves is protected by the first amendment as what they do is speech and not conduct.
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It can't be "blackmail" if the information is publicly available.
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Please please PLEASE file a charge. You are the biggest moron I have ever seen on here. Recently I've exchanged correspondence detailing some history of you and your interactions. You're all talk. So please, surprise someone.
This "running" thing is just nonsense. It's a web based forum. People choose whether or not to reply and if and when there is time to reply and if they have anything useful or more to say. It is impossible to continue a conversation indefinitely here. By your definition, literal
Ultimately (Score:2)
Limiting speech in general would be a contentious issue, and it would be a tricky thing to get right. I think we should expand on the whole "A person has the right to be sec
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No. Enforcement of the law is left to the Executive Branch. It is the job of the Judicial Branch to /interpret/ the laws and ensure that they are in keeping with the Constitution.
Isn't sharing data good? (Score:2, Insightful)
You got a lot of Slashdotters praising hacker groups for exposing all sorts of information. However when there is a legal sharing of information it is just horrible.
Data mining isn't bad it is about collecting data. Business Intelligence is processing the data and its trends to solve issues. Ok yes for the case Pharma is using it to sell to doctors. They are going to do that anyways, now they can do it more directly and cheaper, and that cost savings does get passed down.
And for you IT people wanting co
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Yes, Slashdotters are largely using double-standards in regards to Wikileaks.
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Yes, Slashdotters are largely using double-standards in regards to Wikileaks.
Hardly. In one case you have governments that are supposed to serve their people and don't; that reflexively classify everything mostly to hide the foul deeds of people in government from the people. In this case some sunshine is a good thing. It is beneficial to people and to societies to know what their governments are up to.
In the second case you have massive corporations that have access to the most intimate details of all our personal lives. They wish to use this data for profit. This almost al
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Oh, 'massive corporations' - scary. Gee, I wonder what makes them so 'massive'. It surely is not the thousands or millions of people that make them up, is it?
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Oh, 'massive corporations' - scary. Gee, I wonder what makes them so 'massive'. It surely is not the thousands or millions of people that make them up, is it?
The people who are employed by a corporation do not "make up" that corporation anymore than the corporate headquarters building "makes up" that corporation. The employees are entirely incidental and replaceable, so is the building. The corporation is a person in and of itself under our current law. The size or power of a corporation has much more to do with it's ability to exert power in the public realm, to bend our society to its interests at the expense of mine. The corporation has all the rights t
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Your post makes no sense. You talk as if a corporation is some magical sentient being, with the will and power to act independent of the people involved in it. The people involved in a corporation have exactly the same rights and responsibilities as you do. What additional rights do you think they gain, or responsibilities they lose? Of course a corporation can't be arrested and thrown in jail - it has no ability to act. How can a corporation possibly kill someone? The actions of the PEOPLE in a corpo
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How can a corporation possibly kill someone? The actions of the PEOPLE in a corporation may result in someone's being killed, and if their actions rise to the level of a crime they can and will be arrested. The thing that people value most is liberty, so if they commit a crime we remove their liberty. The thing that corporations value most is money, so if the corporation as a whole commits a crime we remove it's money.
For decades W.R. Grace Inc. mined vermiculite from a mine in Libby, Montana. There is ample documentary evidence that they knew that the vermiculite was contaminated with tremolite asbestos. For decades they concealed this fact from their workforce and the inhabitants of the town. Many people died of asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma. That is how a corporation kills people.
No criminal charges were filed since there was not enough evidence to convict any one particular living person. Grace
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"The open and free sharing of information regarding publicly elected officials, public government offices, and actions taken in the name of a country's citizenry by it's public: good.
The open and free sharing of information regarding private individuals, private individuals' habits, lifestyles, or time schedules, and private individuals' actions: bad."
Do you see the difference? The issue is not a binary, "Share all data, hide all data." The issue boils down to who we, as a country, w
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Show me a government that can operate with no privacy, and I'll show you a government that doesn't last more than about 10 minutes, because it can have no defenses against any internal or external threats.
A corporation is nothing more than a piece of paper. That piece of paper does not have privacy. The people that make up a corporation, and their dealings with each other, deserve exactly the same privacy as people who are not part of the corporation.
Can you hear Mark Zuckerberg singing about it? (Score:3)
All I do is win-win-win no matter what! I got money on my mind, I can never get enough!
Once again the summary is way, way off (Score:3)
The decision said that states cannot limit the speech* of companies that purchase info from pharmacies to one specific group, in this case manufacturers of drugs. If they want to limit the speech it has to be to everyone not just one class.
*There have been previous longstanding decisions that say that some data is free speech and cannot be limited by the states or federal government.
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Having RTFA just once, what I find most disturbing is that pharmacies can sell the information of what doctor is prescribing what drug.
This eases the opportunities for pharma bussiness of going to doctors and telling them "If we receive x prescription of our product from you, we will pay you a % as our agent. And we do not care if the drug is what the patients really needed or not, we only care about units sold."
The rest of the data is mostly harmless (it needs to be linked to medical history to retrieve th
Fine (Score:2)
The Supreme Court and Big Business want information to be free?
So be it.
Regards.
Once Again, Transparency is Needed (Score:2)
"I'm sorry ma'am, we don't call in prescriptions to that pharmacy, they sell the prescription data to pharmaceutical companies and we disagree with that policy. May I suggest Pharmacy Y, it's the next closest to your home?"
Re:court made the right decision (Score:4, Insightful)
the state should not suppress free speech without a good reason. moreover, it is almost always bad policy to regulate the use of information rather than regulate a specific bad action that we want to stop. if the state wanted to prevent pharmaceutical companies from advertising to doctors, it should have tried its luck pass a law to prevent that. http://www.innovationpolicy.org/do-not-track-for-doctors-vs-do-not-track-for [innovationpolicy.org]
Really? How the fuck is taking my personal and private health care information and selling it, in any way, "protected speech"?
Re:court made the right decision (Score:4, Informative)
It isn't your personal and private health care information, the patient stuff is lost in the aggregation, all they want is the prescribing doctor data.
They don't care about your health information, they want to know things like:
* Dr Phil is prescribing competing Product X 5 times as often as he prescribes our Product Y.
* Dr Bill is very well respected by other physicians and prescribes our Product Z a lot.
Sure, you mightn't like what they do marketing wise with that, but it has exactly nothing to do with your personal and private health care information.
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It isn't your personal and private health care information, the patient stuff is lost in the aggregation, all they want is the prescribing doctor data.
Except it is NOT lost. That was one of the major issues in the case, it was the entire reason the state banned it in the first place. That information is recoverable by cross-referencing with other databases such as credit card transactions (time/date/amount/store).
They don't care about your health information,
That's what they say but the now that the SCOTUS has ruled it legal you can be confident that there will be services which will do that cross-referencing and will sell that information for things like back-ground checks.
What we need is for some
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I know how it works. It's the field I work in (on the IT end of manpulating that presciption data amongst other things...)
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Really? How the fuck is taking my personal and private health care information and selling it, in any way, "protected speech"?
When your personal information is stripped out of it per existing federal law. RTFA, this is about doctors not patients.
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> this is about doctors not patients.
Are you sure?
the Supreme Court ... ruled that "the creation and dissemination of information are speech for First Amendment purposes."
If that's all they've got to say about it, then what limits this to doctors and pharmacies? If this is allowed in the medical industry, what industry would it not effect?
Regardless, GP is right. This is not public information, it's private.
And SCOTUS is delusional. The pharmacies didn't create the content, they aggregated and sold it against the wishes of doctors who did create it and expected the information to stay private, and the State of Vermont w
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If that's all they've got to say about it, then what limits this to doctors and pharmacies?
Apparently regular people are limited - see free speech zones.
The comparison is valid - the SCOTUS has a four-part test that requires a free-speech zone serve a very narrow and clear purpose, generally of "protection" or "safety."
Yet a patient's very specific need for protection from having the list of their medications abused by others for profit is apparently not good enough. Such hypocrisy.
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For the decision on generic drugs the court said they cannot be held to a higher responsibility then the drug they are coping. The original drugs did not have to have the warning so the copies of the drugs did not need the warning and could not be sued because the warning was not there. A very logical decision.
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The prescription itself is not free speech, but talking about it is. There is nothing private about a prescription except for the patient's name. You are perfectly free, if you so desire, to declare to the world that Dr Smith gave you a prescription for some drug - you don't need Dr Smith's permission to do so. And this is nothing new - in the mid 70s I worked at a pharmacy, and my job was filling out a card with drug-dosage-doctor for each prescription filled and sending it to some company (IMS, I think