EasyDNS Tries To Balance Bogus Requests To Take Down Legit Foreign Online Pharmacies Against Truly Rogue Pharmacies
from the not-an-easy-balance dept
We've written a few times about domain registrar/hosting company EasyDNS, which has been pretty vocal about how law enforcement and industry groups have recently started targeting registrars and hosting comapnies as "the soft underbelly" for censorship and coercive control. While we've covered this issue frequently as it relates to things like copyright, the real ground zero for this may be around online pharmacies. The online pharmacy space is a bit complicated -- because there are really a few different kinds. There are US-based accredited/approved pharmacies, there are overseas accredited/approved online pharmacies... and then there are flat-out rogue pharmacies dealing in illegally obtained or counterfeit medicines. Obviously the last one is in a different category altogether from the first two, but US drug companies like to conflate legal foreign online pharmacies with the rogue ones.For years, there have been fights over the issue of "gray market" and "re-imported" drugs. The most common case involves Canadian pharmacies, which are perfectly legitimate, selling into the US, but at prices much cheaper than the drug companies would like (undercutting the prices charged by American pharmacies). Fake and dangerous drugs from rogue pharmacies are a real (if relatively small) problem. Legitimate foreign pharmacies selling into the US at cheaper prices are a made up problem by US drug companies. But those US drug companies like to take the "small" problem, and blame it on any non-US pharmacy in an attempt to block out the competition. This has been going on for years, but has ramped up recently.
We've written about how the big drug companies recently got control over the .pharmacy domain, and the indications are that they're planning to use it to block out legitimate foreign pharmacies by arguing that only online pharmacies with a .pharmacy domain are "legit" and then banning legitimate foreign pharmacies from getting the domain. Earlier this year, we also wrote about the lobbying group, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, telling registrars that if they complain about a site, it must be taken down.
Mixed in with all of this is the somewhat questionable setup of an operation called "LegitScript," which is an organization that claims to verify which pharmacies are legit. The history of "LegitScript" is extremely sketchy, involving a former White House official who specifically worked to block legitimate Canadian pharmacies from sending drugs to the US, and who then immediately went off to form LegitScript as a competitor to PharmacyChecker -- a similar service that verifies online pharmacies including Canadian pharmacies. Oh, and the "immediately" in the last sentence may be inaccurate as the guy, John Horton, appears to have registered the domain for LegitScript while he was still a federal government employee... Either way, the US pharma industry has worked hard to make LegitScript the standard while pushing back on PharmacyChecker.
Back to EasyDNS: the company has been fighting off these demands to shut down sites repeatedly, saying that it will only do so with a court order. After getting into a fight with the US's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over demands to take down a bunch of domains, EasyDNS finally agreed to take down a site, after being provided with evidence that it was truly a rogue pharmacy, and someone had died from taking drugs ordered from that site. Because of this EasyDNS has adjusted its policy, saying that if you are selling drugs, you have to prove to EasyDNS that you have a license to do so, or be approved by either LegitScript or PharmacyChecker (meaning that it will allow legitimate foreign pharmacies to exist). EasyDNS is still standing up to bogus requests (including new ones from the City of London Police) to take down websites, but is being more proactive when an online pharmacy has no signs of being legitimate.
While some people complained about EasyDNS's new policy, the company's CEO Mark Jeftovic explained it as follows (after referencing the latest copyright takedown demand from the City of London Police):
So in one case we have people allegedly pirating Honey Boo Boo reruns and on the other we have people dying. We don't know where exactly, but the line goes somewhere in between there.He also notes, as we did, how Fedex was recently indicted over deliveries from questionable online pharmacies, and notes that it's only a matter of time until criminal charges are filed against a registrar or hosting company as well.
We have always done summary takedowns on net abuse issues, spam, botnets, malware etc. It seems reasonable that a threat to public health or safety that has been credibly vetted fits in the same bucket.
As a private company we feel within our rights to set limits and boundaries on what kinds of business risk we are willing to take on and under what circumstances. Would we tell the US State Department to go to hell if they wanted us to take down ZeroHedge? Absolutely. Do we want to risk criminally indicted by the FDA because of unregulated drug imports? Not so much.
These are not easy decisions for anyone -- though, I have to imagine that truly "rogue" pharmacies are increasingly moving to the darknet and underground markets anyway. However, while some may disagree, there does seem to be a reasonable argument for why a registrar like EasyDNS decides it really doesn't want to be involved with clearly rogue pharmacies.
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Filed Under: domain registrars, fda, grey market, online pharmacies, pharmaceuticals, reimportation, rogue pharmacies
Companies: easydns, legitscripts, pharmacychecker
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If the only problem however is the US pharmacies/companies whining how 'they are selling the same drugs we are, at a fraction of the cost, undercutting our price-gouging!' though, the site deserves to stay up.
Now, if the FDA or another agency(not the pharma industry) wants to write up an evidence based list covering the ones from the first category, and present it to registrars, I imagine that would be a big help dealing with the the health issue, though nothing short of the competing foreign pharmacies being forbidden to sell to the US will likely shut the US pharma companies up I'd imagine.
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Where do you draw the line indeed?
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Why don't those US pharmacies/companies who are whining just get a new law passed called DRM (Drug Rights Management) and put in a region lock on medication so the drugs won't work unless your body is in the country of purchase?
After all, it worked for DVDs and e-books, why not drugs?
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Are the drugs foreign made? No we sold it to them and now they're reselling it!
Why do we charge US customers so much more that it actually saves US citizens money to buy from Canadian pharmacies instead of US pharmacies? Because we're evil greedy bastards and the US healthcare system sucks at getting lower prescription drug prices, which totally rocks for our profits!
You can't allow an efficient healthcare system to undercut our profits in a nation with an inefficient healthcare system! The consequences could be dire! We might not be able to afford a solid gold toilet seat on our yachts come next spring!
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That's most though; there are a few places in Canada that sell stuff, but most of that is not branded drugs; more the naturopathic kind. Both the FDA and Canada's equivalent crack down pretty hard on drugs imported with the aid of the Canadian government being re-sold out of country.
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Oops. Fixed.
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It's like holding USPS liable or holding the mail carrier liable for a package from an illegal business.
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Of course, court order or no court order, here we have the US FDA providing evidence that someone actually died. There can be legitimate concerns raised about the validity of the FDA, but at least it's a government agency tasked with this kind of thing.
If the comparison we have is the City of London Police's extra-judicial, based-on-Hollywood's-say-so requests, or those from the ICE -- which does not stand for Immigration and Copyright Enforcement -- then I'd say there's a reasonable line to draw in between.
Now I just hope that easyDNS and other such companies actually standing up for their customers won't get bankrupt weathering all the complaints and lawsuits.
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Not so easy
They suffer the same problem that most companies do with this. Their intention is to offer a good service and make it "easy", but in doing so they also make it easy for scammers to slide in and take advantage. The scammers always seem to want to hide with the innocent and decent people, to make it harder to whack that mole.
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Re: Not so easy
How is that any different from the phone companies, and mail companies making easy for scammers to sell stock, or tout for business, like work not needed on a house?
Just because it is over the Internet does not mean innocent third parties should become police; or worse, the enforcers of the business models of drug and entertainment companies.
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Wow, just wow.
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It's all in perspective.
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Kind of funny since you're the same guy who used to go by the logged in name "The Anti-Mike"
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I find that rather funny , Considering the the amount of bodies Big Pharma has piled up in their basements.
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Clarifying rogue pharmacies
See http://blog.easydns.org/2014/08/15/heres-why-we-took-down-a-pharmacy-domain-without-a-court-order/ for more details on this.
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Police?
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Section 230
Uhh ... wouldn't a registrar or hosting company be protected by the Section 230 safe harbor here? After all, they're just an online service provider, and unlike FedEx would never physically handle any drugs.
(Not that FedEx should be liable for what its users choose to ship, either, mind you.)
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You'd think, but Sec. 230 doesn't apply to federal criminal laws... and illegal drugs... are criminal.
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I knew all these corporations pushing "free trade" were full of shit. Free trade is only for corporations, not citizens. Corporations are perfectly fine with blocking free trade if it allows them to inflate prices in certain regions.
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Kudos to easyDNS
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