Wetlook World Forum

Current time: Thu 25/04/24 04:58:12 GMT

Translate page FROM -> TO

Translate page TO <- FROM

Message # 5811.3

Subject: Re: How Visa/MasterCard want to 'protect' us - A bit of a rant, but relevant :(

Date: Wed 10/09/03 04:14:40 GMT

Name: MK

Email: wamtec@compuserve.com

Website:

Report Abuse or Problem to Nigel at Minxmovies
If you enjoy this forum, then please make a small donation to help
with running costs: (you can change amount)

Nigel,

I can empathize with your frustrations....cos it seems like all the online payment systems are ganging up on us these days too. I have had my paypal and yahoo paydirect accounts suspended and frozen last month...and it took a lot of effort (and button removing) from them to release my funds and unlock my accounts.

Some day the puritans who are driving all of this....will encounter some smarter people from TAX authorities in the USA and the UK and other countries....cos anybody with half a brain knows that....when you allow adult businesses to use cc services and online payment services...this makes everybody HONEST and they report all their income to the tax authorities and pay taxes on their sales. Electronic transactions can be traced...so using electronic services keeps adult business owners honest in their tax reporting and income tax payments....defacto....the tax collection agencies in each country collect more revenues from adult merchants.

The more you restrict adult business from doing WHAT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL TO DO (i.e. producing content with consenting adults of legal age) and the more you try to isolate them from using mainstream payment services and forcing them to resort to untraceable payment schemes like money orders or western union payments...then all you are succeeding in doing is driving adult businesses to "the underground economy" of using non traceable payment methods and thereby under reporting their true income and thereby not paying all the taxes they should be paying.

The puritans are not going to stop adult businesses from doing what they do...all they will be doing is guaranting that less revenues will be collected by the income tax departments in each country.

Paypal was just fine for the first 3 years of operation...until the company was sold last year and taken over by Ebay...and the new Ebay management team were quite blatant about being born again christians who were on a mission to fight against smut on the internet. We knew what was coming...and you are right about politics...I won't go there either....

...except to say that we should blame everything on Al Gore...cos after all...he claims he invented the internet....therefore he is to blame for opening Pandora's box....ha ha

In reply to Message (5811)

How Visa/MasterCard want to 'protect' us - A bit of a rant, but relevant :(

By Nigel - nigel@wetlook.com Wed 10/09/03 00:03:43 GMT

Website: www.wetlook.com

As you may have realised, us producers are having a harder and harder time having credit card orders processed. Although we all like to give stuff away for free, and we are only really in the WAM game because we love it so much, we do try to recoup some of our expenditure.

The powers that be in Vi$a and Ma$terCard are adding tighter and tigher control on 'Adult' businesses (I'm not going to comment of the political aspects to this). For this reason, Multicards, and many other card processing companies are restricting what we can do.

Already US Banks have had to stop handling offshore clients, and the latest news from the European banks is that they are only able to process orders for Tangible Products (VHS + DVDs, not streamed content or memberships). This sounds fine for me (Minx Movies) for example, but wait a minute, there are contiditions...

The website is only allowed to show 'box covers', not any 'previews' ( picture galleries, or AVI/MPEG downloads) UNLESS they are 'protected' by an 'Adult Check' type system. I can only presume that this is Vi$a and Ma$terCard's vague attempt to 'clean up' the Internet.

If they manage this to acheive this, then before you enter ANY vaguely adult site that is selling stuff then you will need to subscribe (and pay annually for) an 'Adult Pass'. This will hurt all WAM producers, we barely scrape enough sales to cover our costs, and anything that puts off casual browsers is very bad news.

Even inside the US you are going to have problems, I've recently switched my transaction processing to ozbill, based in Australia, but there are moves afoot to block or question any US citizen making a 'foreign' (outside US) payment !!! So much for the land of the free. (I've already had 1 customer's card turned down, they had to contact their bank to complain before the transaction finally went through).

Personally I am voting with my wallet, I will be applying for an Amex card later this week, Vi$a and Ma$terCard can go whistle for any more commission from my shopping.

Nigel

Report Abuse or Problem to Nigel at Minxmovies
If you enjoy this forum, then please make a small donation to help with running costs: (you can change amount)