> Mastercard/Visa are required by law to not knowingly allow the purchase of illegal goods/services (they can't facilitate the payment of illegal activites). >

> Mastercard/Visa are required by law to not knowingly allow the purchase of illegal goods/services (they can't facilitate the payment of illegal activites). > This seems totally fair, commendable and hard to disagree with - if you ask me. This goes a few steps further than that, which is what makes it scary. Pornhub's customers pay subscriptions which enable access to exclusive content. The illegal content in question was user-posted and made available for free without a subscription. So Mastercard and Visa were not "knowingly allowing the purchase of illegal goods/services." Instead, they took action against one of their customers because that customer was unintentionally guilty of unrelated illegal activty. That sets a pretty scary precedent IMO and demonstrates the frightening power of modern payment processors.