
NABP moves ahead with management of the '.pharmacy' domain name
General availability for applicants begins on June 3
Having won the responsibility to manage the dot-pharmacy domain name from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
NABP has also authorized the first domain registry provider, EnCirca (Boston), where domain names and addresses will be reserved. The registration process is not cheap, at least relative to consumers or small businesses registering domain names: EnCirca will charge $1,049 for the first year, after a $2,000 initial application fee to NABP. “There’s more work involved with this process than a typical ICANN registration,” notes Tom Barrett, president of EnCirca, citing the process by which NABP sends an authorizing token to EnCirca after an applicant has passed muster with NABP.
The overall goal remains the same: to drive drug purchasers and patients toward officially recognized dot-pharmacy sites, and away from the rogue online pharmacies that operate outside most national drug-dispensing programs, and are a source of counterfeit or diverted products.
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