---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 05:20:19 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: FDA Net-regulations -- "Drug Lords" from HotWired http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/42/global4a.html HotWired The Netizen "Drug Lords" Global Network by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) Washington, DC, 17 October Forget the Communications Decency Act and the censor-happy Clinton administration. Instead, it now seems like we have to keep an eye on the pinstriped bureaucrats at the US Food and Drug Administration, who are hatching their own schemes to regulate the Net. I just got back from the agency's two-day conference in the Maryland suburbs, entitled "FDA and the Internet: Advertising and Promotion of Medical Products." Discussions drifted from troublesome-to-the-Feds notions of drug use in America Online chat rooms to emerging international Net-regulatory agreements, but all the talk shared a kind of benevolent paternalism. Consumers can't be trusted to make their own choices. The Federal government must protect us from reading what only doctors are allowed to see. Netizens can't even be trusted to figure out when they're leaving a Web site after they click on a link. Drug industry representatives on the panel this morning appeared less than overly concerned with regulatory threats to free speech. Jamie Marks from Body Health Resources said: "It's very important that drug companies police the sites they link to." The panel also discussed how to prevent sites that celebrate or even talk about illicit drug use from linking to sites operated by pharmaceutical companies. Even search engines like AltaVista could be hit by FDA regulations. Sara Stein from Stanford University noted, "Search engines have begun to sell links ... that's another area of disclosure that's required." Translation: the FDA is looking to have a say in how to label medical advertisements on Web sites. The FDA's also working the international angle. They brought in to the conference speakers from France, Britain, Switzerland, Brazil, and the Netherlands - all of whom were particularly interested in online drug promotion, since US advertising laws are currently so permissive. J. Idanpaan-Heikkila, the World Health Organization's director of drug management and policies, said that real-world claims promoting pharmaceuticals should be "in good taste," adding, "I think this is applicable to the Internet." Cedric Allenou, the French Embassy's health attache, predicted more controls: "In France, as in the United States, there is a lack of regulation on the Internet. But these issues will soon be discussed by the French government." When asked what his country would do if a US server distributes information banned in France, he replied: "If your Web site is not in France, you're not under French rule. This is a problem with French Internet regulation." John Rothchild, an attorney from the Federal Trade Commission - which will announce its own Net-regulation plan later this year - said: "Based on some hasty research I did last night, I can report it is feasible to control access to our Web site based on what country the accesser is in.... I don't know the technical details, but according to the technical people at the FTC, non-US domain names have a two-letter suffix." Rothchild apparently didn't realize that many companies outside the United States have domain names ending in nothing but .com. At the end of the two-day conference, meanwhile, the one question left unanswered by attendees was not whether the FDA should regulate the Net, but how long it will take them, and how far they'll go. ###