Anonymous drug markets on the Internet – Lunch talk with Meropi Tzanetakis

O P E N    B R O W N – B A G   L U N C H

Lunch talk with Meropi Tzanetakis: Anonymous drug markets on the Internet
Wednesday, 18 January 2016 · 1pm · HIIG Kitchen

In this talk Meropi Tzanetakis will explore how resilient, global markets for drugs were able to emerge on the darknet. Irrespective of current drug policy, a set of technological innovations facilitates the increasing global availability of a wide range of psychoactive substances. These innovations include anonymising software for communication purposes and virtual currencies such as Bitcoin to enable the trade of goods and services, which are delivered by traditional postal services without their knowledge. In contrast to material drug markets, illicit drug transactions proceed without any face-to-face meeting and the actors and locations remain anonymous. Although enforcement of the law is limited in this environment, actors introduced highly formalised mechanisms of self-regulation to develop and maintain stable markets which are similar to those offered by e-commerce companies.

Meropi Tzanetakis is a lecturer at the University of Vienna and Senior Researcher at the Vienna Centre for Societal Security. Meropi holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Vienna. Her research interests include illicit drug markets, digital technology, the darknet, virtual currencies, the sociology of markets, political economy, and organised crime. Meropi has recently completed a cooperative two-year project on how the phenomenon of darknet drug markets impacts upon sellers and customers, funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology.

The lunch talk is open to the public, please register via the form below.