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."

Comments

Big Corporation

[Anonymous Coward]

Big corporations always win in the end. They have the money to pay the lawyers and the lobbyists. It's their world; we just live in it. This has basically become a country by the corporations for the corporations. One nation, under CEO, with corruption and insider trading for all.

Re:Big Corporation

[bughunter]

Big corporations always win in the end. It's their world; we just live in it.

Yes, and this nation was founded on the ideal that the people (not businesses co-opting the rights of individuals) should rule, and that the three tyrannies of big warlords, big religion, and big business can be prevented.

I infer from your comment that you're simply content to see a return to the homo sapiens status quo: it took barely a 100 years for that experiment to fail. Well, many of us aren't content. In fact, more than a few of us are downright pissed.

We almost turned it around after the Great Depression, but the great war against Fascism transferred too much power back to the warlords and businesses. (Religion never really went away, though it seems more a less a tool for the other two these days.)

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Where individuals and corporations collide, in the US the corporations win.

Supreme Court Decision Disasters keep mounting...

[SpryGuy]

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.

Re:court made the right decision

[Jawnn]

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

Really? How the fuck is taking my personal and private health care information and selling it, in any way, "protected speech"?

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[DoofusOfDeath]

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.

Logical conclusion of this

[AarghVark]

Now that the gloves are off and they can mine data to their hearts content, what is to prevent them from using the data for more than just advertising? I think some people will start seeing letters like this in the future from their insurance companies: "Dear Sir/Madam, due to the number of your relatives receiving (cancer/alzheimers/diabetes/etc) treatment, we are electing to no longer cover you due."

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Isn't sharing data good?

[jellomizer]

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 cool Comp Sci jobs, Data Mining and Business Intelligence is actually quite fun Computer Science work, it is good pay, and not well outsourced.

Re:Long-term damage from the Bush Admin

[Hatta]

I'm mostly a conservative, and I don't recognize these rulings as conservative. These are corporatist

What's the difference?