White House To Meet With ICANN On Illegal Online Pharmacies

The White House has called a meeting for later this month with the group that manages the Internet's domain name system to discuss ways to crack down on illegal online pharmacies.

The meeting with officials from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will take place Sept. 29 with White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel and other White House and agency officials, a spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management and Budget confirmed. An ICANN spokesman said he didn't know which ICANN official would be attending the White House meeting yet. The White House also invited ICANN-accredited registrars, firms that sell domain name registrations to the public, and registries, the companies and groups that operate the databases of each domain name such as .org or .com, to attend the meeting. ICANN has been criticized for not doing enough to crack down on registrars who provide domain name registrations to Web sites that sell fake or stolen drugs without a prescription.