February 2010

Many electrons have been spilled in response to the recent Italian court decision that found several Google executives guilty of privacy violations, after a video was uploaded to Google Video that showed an autistic boy being tormented by bullies.

So is Google a media company? Or is it simply a form of Internet service provider, and therefore not directly responsible for the content it hosts? Such a distinction is crucial to the Italian decision. Google's primary business might be search and search-related ads and marketing, but with YouTube and Blogger and Buzz and other services in its stable, it's also part content provider. There's ample reason to believe that Google will be successful on appeal, and that Italy's decision is almost certainly an aberration. And it's possible that the case only arose because Italian Prime Minister Silivio Berlusconi sees Google and its services as a threat to his interests, since he controls the leading commercial broadcaster (as well as a number of newspapers and other assets) and also has considerable influence over the state broadcaster. But the principle is still an important one: If Google -- or any other media company, for that matter -- is held to the kind of standards that the Italian court is trying to impose, we will almost certainly lose a core element of what makes the web such a powerful force for freedom of thought, commentary and inquiry.

Sen Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who is investigating the safety of health information technology, appears to be interested in exploring whether the Food and Drug Administration should regulate such products. Sen Grassley has sent letters to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and H. Stephen Lieber, CEO at the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society, asking for the organizations' views on a 1997 position paper that called for voluntary industry oversight of the integrity of clinical systems rather than regulation. The paper was published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. The FDA, which started considering regulation in 1996, ultimately declined to do so amid industry opposition. One of the questions Grassley asks of Sec Sebelius, in a letter dated Feb. 24, is: "With over $20 billion in taxpayer money at stake and with increasing complexity in the technologies being used in our hospitals, do you believe it is time to revisit FDA's responsibilities in regulating HIT products being used in clinical care?"Among the questions to HIMSS: What is HIMSS' position on FDA's current role in the regulation of HIT products? Would you support providing FDA with more authority in this area? Is there another agency that should be given authority to regulate the safety of HIT products?"

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT began making available today open source software that will let physicians extract data automatically from their electronic health record systems and generate quality reports and analysis on their patients' healthcare. The "popHealth" prototype software is designed to make it easier for providers to submit summary quality measures or data to public health organizations and federal agencies as part of their existing workflow, according to the ONC announcement. The software uses established standards and is Web-based.

The European Commission has pledged to make sure the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will not force countries to disconnect people for unlawfully downloading copyrighted music, movies and other material.

The assurance from the office of the trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht, is the strongest statement on ACTA to emerge from the new Commission since it took office earlier in February. ACTA negotiations, which have been taking place since 2007, aim to create a new global intellectual-property enforcement regime that builds on the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). Much of ACTA is taken up with trademark protection and counterfeit goods, but the draft text also has a section on online copyright protection, according to published summaries.