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I really wish law enforcement would enfoce laws, and payment processors would process payments. If the latter notice unlawful activity, they can simply report i

• chasing 6y ago
  Alternately, maybe there shouldn't be a payment processor duopoly and businesses should be allowed to act ethically (within the bounds of the law)?
  • jraph 6y ago
    > maybe there shouldn't be a payment processor duopoly I agree, but this is another problem even if there is a link, and both are not mutually exclusive > businesses should be allowed to act ethically (within the bounds of the law) I don't get your point there. Who forces PornHub to act like they do?
  • cathyreisenwitz 6y ago
    Both can be true
• fastball 6y ago
  This is why so many people are so gungho about crypto.
  • toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Make no mistake, crypto or not, the law still applies and you aren't going to "win" against a nation state that has a monopoly on force and legal enforcement. Your actions on the ledger are mostly permanent, and one opsec mistake and you're screwed.
    • seibelj 6y ago
      The government can't outlaw payments to a company that isn't illegal, but they can lean on our duopoly of payment providers to effectively do the same thing. Crypto enables true peer-to-peer payments, which prevents aggressive government action against companies that are morally corrupt in the mind of some (but not all) people.
    • chrisco255 6y ago
      That's one less battle to fight, though. At least with crypto the payment platform is plausibly neutral.
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    • cft 6y ago
      They already accept https://thebitcoinnews.com/pornhub-accepts-bitcoin-top-adult-site-expands-cryptocurrency-payment-options/ https://thebitcoinnews.com/pornhub-accepts-bitcoin-top-adult... This simply means that the government will double down on making life for crypto holders more and more difficult, like KYC on non-hosted wallets
    • Reelin 6y ago
      > Your actions on the ledger are mostly permanent, and one opsec mistake and you're screwed. Which is precisely what's motivating the ongoing rapid development of various privacy preservation strategies (Monero, Zcash, Wasabi Wallet, ...).
• chc 6y ago
  The problem is that the former will go after the latter if they knowingly take part in unlawful activity, so they have to cut off support if they believe there's something illegal going on.
• ogre_codes 6y ago
  > I really wish law enforcement would enfoce laws, and payment processors would process payments. Funding criminal activity can itself be a crime. So financial processors who process payments indiscriminately can find themselves in court for the sins of their clients. Most financial institutions are not willing to bear the expense of legal defense for questionable clientele. Update: This is similar in a lot of ways to the issues Marijuana retailers have with banking: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/01/22/why-marijuana-retailers-cant-use-banks https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/01/22/...
  • tw600040 6y ago
    SO policing what clients do should be the job of the payment processor instead of police?
    • Barrin92 6y ago
      Yes, in the same way it's the job of the bartender to check if there are underaged drinkers in the bar and do their due diligence. Delegation of responsibility is necessary because 1. nobody wants to live in a police state because that's what you need if everything would immediately be escalated to law enforcement, 2. the owner of an establishment has domain knowledge that the police does not have, 3. handing the responsibility over to law enforcement would immediately give law enforcement an excuse to have total access to all private matters, harming everyone else's privacy.
      • McDyver 6y ago
        I believe you're contradicting yourself. In your example, if the underage drinkers pay using MasterCard, then it's MCs job to check, as they're doing to pornhub. MasterCard should stay out of it, as they do in other situations.
        • Barrin92 6y ago
          >, if the underage drinkers pay using MasterCard, then it's MCs job to check no, a bartender is always obligated to verify the age of people who enter their establishment if in doubt, regardless of how they pay. You won't get off the hook selling booze to minors because they pay digitally. And that is actually very reasonable for the exact reason I pointed out, if it was MC's responsibility they would have an immediate excuse to snoop into my purchasing history for every minor transaction. (which they already have to a far too large degree).
• OneGuy123 6y ago
  It's funny that when some more right leaning site gets banned many people on hacker news are like "yeah well they should create their own payment platforms then". But when it comes to porn...oh NO! NOT MY PORN!
• irishloop 6y ago
  Since users are essentially allowed to upload their own videos, and Section 230 prevents online distributors from being held liable for the content produced on their site, they aren't doing anything illegal by hosting these videos depicting underage women or sexual assault. Sometimes the only way to force a company to change is to use the market to force them to change. Attack their advertisers or payment processors and force them to do something.
  • elric 6y ago
    Websites have been shut down for users uploading copyrighted materials. People have been hunted to the end of the earth (well, New Zealand) for it. And you're saying that law enforcement can't take legal action against child pornography or rape? That's ... bleak, troubling, and hopefully wrong.
  • csnover 6y ago
    This is just plain wrong. Section 230(e)(1) [0]: > Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair the enforcement of section 223 or 231 of this title, chapter 71 (relating to obscenity) or 110 (relating to sexual exploitation of children) of title 18, or any other Federal criminal statute. [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
• MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  > I really wish law enforcement would enfoce laws, and payment processors would process payments. I'm usually on the same page. But it is really hard to feel sorry for Pornhub, they're not Good Guys. The whole normalisation of porn is not a net win for our civilisation. OnlyFans is a relationship simulator for lonely men and as such exploitative. Using the gray corporate term "sex work" mis-characterises the soul-sucking debasedness of it all. It turns everyone into a consumer along its path, and the effects it has on gender relations and family formation are devastating. But I'm fully aware this is a minority opinion on HN.
  • pas 6y ago
    > The whole normalisation of porn is not a net win for our civilisation. Sources? Also you seem to let's assume unintentionally mixing porn with its production modes, its ecosystem, all of its problems, plus the mental health problems of rich men, and so on.
  • deftnerd 6y ago
    You could make the same argument about so many different things. E-cigarettes or junk food is not a net win for civilization. What about addictions to video gaming? Donating to political parties that you think are against progress? It boils down to the fact that you're wanting to let opinions on "how things should be" steer availability of core economic infrastructure, rather than relying on the legal system which is more properly setup to come to these conclusions.
    • MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
      Nah I just said its hard to feel sorry for them. I don't think payment providers should be politically partial. EDIT Oh PornHub is now implementing the following measures: a.) allow uploads only from verified users; b.) no downloads; c.) improvements in moderation Maybe I'm actually for this then. Apparently this is what it takes.
  • Miner49er 6y ago
    Yeah, sex is just another thing to be commodified. Eventually it might be difficult to have sex without someone making a profit.
• cathyreisenwitz 6y ago
  Agree. My hunch is that the US government is using money laundering and “know your customer” laws to force payment processors to play cops. I’ve long hated money laundering and “know your customer” laws for many reasons. They’re a giant privacy violation. And for what? These laws measurably don’t work to stop big banks from financing terrorism and human trafficking. There are several reasons they don’t work. One is that, the DOJ will come down hard on small American businesses but refuses to actually investigate or prosecute large, offshore companies. They also can’t work because the vast majority of money laundering happens with cash. Even if these laws could meaningfully reduce money laundering, who does that benefit? The vast majority of money laundering is for victimless crimes, including the consensual adult sales of drugs, gambling, porn, and prostitution. These laws simply work to give large incumbents a regulatory advantage over their competitors.
  • quadcore 6y ago
    That comment made my day. Those laws are a pain in the ass for Digital Nomads for example which is a growing population.
  • Proziam 6y ago
    > Agree. My hunch is that the US government is using money laundering and “know your customer” laws to force payment processors to play cops. This isn't a hunch, this is entire purpose of KYC and AML. Even something as simple as making a large deposit at the bank is enough to trigger reports going to places that might cause you concern.
    • Spooky23 6y ago
      Look at former Governor Spitzer as an example.
  • colechristensen 6y ago
    Absolutely, one of the ways the United States projects its power is through financial regulation. If you want to touch our economy in any way, you expose yourself to regulation. You have a lot of claims there, do you have sources? AML regulations do plenty, and they start with banks checking for sketchy transactions and not executing them. You can also look up several cases of very large penalties for breaking these laws. The US crushed a couple of Swiss banks a few years back, the longest operating bank which had been going for hundreds of years was effectively shut down by money laundering judgements. It seems you want to have small financial businesses not be responsible for people using their services to commit crimes... well too bad, I say. You don't get a free pass to aid and abet crime because you're small. Like many things, the business of facilitating financial transactions isn't just keeping a ledger and presenting a nice interface to it... the real meat of the business is accurately keeping transactions on par with regulation and resolving disputes. The obvious part of the business is the easy part, the hard part is what you get paid for.
• joe_the_user 6y ago
  We live in a society and basically any enterprise has an obligation to not help another person or enterprise engage in crime - a gun store is obligated to not sell someone a gun if they express an intent to use it to engage in crime. That said, the issue here is a "fishing expedition". I'm sure Pornhub makes some effort to screen content for illegality but the problem is some still gets through 'cause of scale and costs. I don't know if Pornhub has safe harbor protections or not but I suspect the main target is effectively porn in general.
  • dcolkitt 6y ago
    > any enterprise has an obligation to not help another person or enterprise engage in crime This is true. But the standards applied to financial transactions are way more stringent than other businesses. KYC/AML laws basically create an affirmative obligation for financial institutions to proactively determine whether each and every customer is engaged in illegal activity. Unlike in other businesses, it's not enough to just say that you weren't aware of your customers intentions. Unless you've taken efforts to affirm that all their activity is legal, you can be criminally liable. If some guy walks into a bakers and asks, "What's the best cannoli to bring alone to a mob hit", then the baker is obligated not to do business with him. But the equivalent of KYC/AML would require the baker to verify and document that none of the pastries are being used for illegal activity.
  • kelnos 6y ago
    I think we also have the obligation to not act as judge, jury, and executioner. If we suspect a customer has committed a crime, we should report that, with any evidence we have, to the proper authorities, and let them decide whether there's actually a crime there, or if we're mistaken. Access to a reliable payments network (of which there are very few in the world, and even fewer in the western world) is required for doing any kind of online business. Whether or not to destroy a business based on their -- alleged! -- illegal activity should be decided by a court, not a corporate legal department. Unfortunately, there are garbage laws around financial transactions that make MC liable if they don't do their own policing. IMO those laws need to go.
  • odessacubbage 6y ago
• neaden 6y ago
  Honest question. If you found out your client was making money from child porn would you continue to do business with them?
  • powersnail 6y ago
    If they had been diligently trying to remove them from the website, I don’t see anything wrong with it.
    • ardy42 6y ago
      > If they had been diligently trying to remove them from the website, I don’t see anything wrong with it. But what if their diligent efforts failed or proved to be inadequate, and they still kept their site up? If there's a fundamental flaw in their model that allowed horrible things to persist despite their efforts, they can't just throw up their hands and continue with the excuse that "they tried." That's a situation where the right thing to do is shut the whole thing down.
      • philwelch 6y ago
        That seems excessive. By the same logic we should shut down the Postal Service because they have less than 100% success stopping people from sending child porn through the mail.
      • monokh 6y ago
        Should we take this approach, there would be nothing left, including the internet on which we conversate here. There were these exact arguments present against it. It's unfortunate but the reality is that every advancement in society can and will be used for illegal and immoral activity. It is a matter of the greater good.
      • powersnail 6y ago
        Cash also has the fundamental “flaw” of allowing criminal activity to be funded. Should the government stop printing cash? Encryption has the fundamental “flaw” of allowing terrorists to communicate freely. Should a back door be installed everywhere? PH doesn’t seem to be throw their hands up, either. They deploy algorithms similar to other social media / video websites to detect illegal content. I’m not saying PH is definitely doing enough; I can’t possibly know that. But whether their effort is enough should be judged in the court. If they aren’t doing what the law requires them to do, they should be prosecuted.
• colechristensen 6y ago
  Law enforcement does enforce laws for things like this, one of those ways is through finances. Risk averse and perhaps morally motivated, payment processors see a poorly regulated market and choose not to participate in it. Pornography is hard, it's on the interface of liberty where if you want to maximize freedom, it isn't just a simple action. You need to be careful to protect people in their freedom to express themselves, and you need to protect people from being abused. >these seemingly arbitrary decisions can be extremely impactful One would hope that they are impactful. An enormously profitable industry has not been doing enough to protect people from the abuses the business encourages and is thus threatened with losing the ability to sell its product. I really don't see a problem with that.
• filmgirlcw 6y ago
  I’m sure MC would prefer to keep collecting the processing fees with a client of this size — the problem is that there has now been a very public report of illegal practices taking place on the site and MC’s lawyers must think that continuing to process payments on the site could make them vulnerable to criminal or civil penalties. Would you risk your massive global business for one client? I wouldn’t. I agree that it would be nice to see due process happen first, but I don’t blame companies like MasterCard from proverbially yeeting this stuff away.
• jstummbillig 6y ago
  > They are certainly free to do business with whomever they please But should they really? Because I am completely with you in that this is increasingly problematic in a world where certain services are so core to our lives, taking part is increasingly unavoidable and being shut out is actullay a disturbance to ones social or economic life. Considering how lopsided the power balance is, I do not think it is okay for companies to be allowed to in essence randomly terminate accounts and services that are vital for other businesses or private people to function, no matter what is stated in the ToS.
• medicineman 6y ago
  Their platform, their rules. If you don't like it you can go setup your own global payment processor.
• bjowen 6y ago
  This is more or less how much of the world works already - if you’re in the USA and you’ve heard of FinCEN, that’s what that’s for. Money moves quickly, often between non-co-operative jurisdictions, often irretrievably. Money laundering activities exploit the points in the payments system where enforcement and traceability are slower and more difficult. Filing suspicious activity reports is all well and good, but enforcement is always a tradeoff between the expense of the prosecution and the prospect of obtaining a conviction. Meanwhile more than a trillion dollars leaks into the global money laundry annually under the status quo[0]. That’s _with_ the threat of prosecution - and thousands of people working in AML/CTF prevention worldwide. MC and Visa (JCB, UnionPay...) have to walk an awkward line between consumers’ and businesses’ demands for instantaneous global payments and countervailing demands that consumers be protected from deception, bad business practices and other forms of abuse. The policy is almost always to opt for the ounce of prevention, because most individuals can’t afford a pound of lawsuit. [0] https://www.un.org/en/desa/tax-abuse-money-laundering-and-corruption-plague-global-finance https://www.un.org/en/desa/tax-abuse-money-laundering-and-co...