Copyright 2000 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta
Journal and Constitution
January 2, 2000, Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: Personal Technology; Pg. 1E
LENGTH: 454 words
HEADLINE:
Techweek;
A quick look at the latest technology news
BYLINE: Staff reports and news services
SOURCE: AJC
BODY:
Internet
drug sale regulations sought
Clinton administration officials said last
week they would ask Congress to regulate the growing sale of
prescription drugs over the Internet.
White House officials said President Clinton would ask for legislation
requiring online pharmacies to get approval from the Food and Drug
Administration. In addition, he will ask Congress to beef up the agency's
investigative powers and increase the penalties for online sales of prescription
drugs to people without prescriptions. The proposals are also intended to make
it easier for the government to stop online sales of unapproved drugs,
counterfeit drugs and products promoted with fraudulent claims.
There is
no federal certification program for online pharmacies and, operating in
cyberspace, many of them do not get the state licenses that are required of
traditional drugstores. Policing these stores and their sales of prescription
drugs has been difficult, federal officials say.
Dr. Jane Henney,
commissioner of food and drugs, said Clinton's proposal would create civil
penalties of up to $ 500,000 for selling a prescription drug to a person who did
not have a valid prescription or for operating without federal certification.
Federal officials say they now have difficulty prosecuting online pharmacies and
that fines are usually limited to $ 1,000.
DVD-copying software allowed
A hacker's computer program that copies DVD movies could cause big
problems for the film and electronics industry, but a county judge in California
last week refused to stop its distribution.
The DVD Copy Control
Association is suing to prevent 72 Web site programmers from making the software
available on the Internet. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge William
Elfving denied the group's request for a restraining order.
The
software, called DeCSS, allows users to unlock the security code on DVDs and
copy movies to personal computers that don't have the DVD's decryption keys.
The association alleges that distributing either the software or the
codes is an unauthorized use of the group's trade secrets. But many site
programmers who posted the program said they were simply providing software to
play DVDs on computers with Linux operating systems.
''People have a
legal right to play the materials that they've already purchased in a different
format,'' said Tara Lemmey, president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that seeks to protect civil liberties
and free speech on the Internet.
The lawsuit, however, says protecting
the DVD encryption technology is critical to the future of DVDs.
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Compiled from staff, news service and published reports.
LOAD-DATE: January 2, 2000 
