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Visa Must Face Claim It Profited from Pornhub Video of Child

ggm 4y ago
If anyone can push back on criminal abuse of card services, its the card service industry. This is like CLI faking and telephony: the phone company ("TPC") has been very good at pushing back on regulation, SHAKEN/STIR is coming but its a way off. We all know that of the order 5 agencies do all the dark market card processing in the end. If they want to stop people making $ out of crime, they can, any time they choose for some cost, and consequence. They are happy to decide randomly to withdraw service from OnlyFans accounts, yet want to claim inability to police the CSAM issue? Come on! I don't entirely dislike this lawsuit. I think the semi-regulated public utility side of international card clearing needs to be talked about more. We depend on this stuff. It's not really a market any more, the HH index would not call this a fiercely competitive space with costs in Mastercard, Visa, JCB tending to a norm. (they are all immensely profitable, and they make good money out of allowing crime, within limits. Part of paywave being signed out was a shift in risk from the card companies back to consumers, so they now have more ability to avoid the results of lack of card security on the part of consumers. Unrelated to the CSAM issue here, but a sign of their strength)
- codefreeordie 4y ago
  On the one hand, it is true that the entrenched players here have an unreasonable amount of power, but... ...on the other hand, the consequence of pushing too hard in terms of making card networks responsible for the stuff bought through them is that we will increasingly find the card networks meddling in what kinds of businesses are allowed to accept their cards. And in the modern world, that means they become the ultimate and barely-accountable arbiters of what kinds of businesses are allowed to exist. We will be really unhappy with them having that power.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Yes. I get this too. "its just money" is important, but that said, a mediating agent has always been in the role of declining to do business, there is no automatic right to a bank (title VI aside: they can't discriminate on some grounds in law) And right now, they're enabling crimes of all kinds. I know a forensic accountant, and she says cryptocurrencies are a delight to law enforcement because they are anything but anonymous. The implication I took from this is that the equivalent process chain in Visa and the like is actually harder.
    - codefreeordie 4y ago
      This is why cash is so necessary, and why we do need an actual cash economy. Without cash, it is too easy for the entrenched power base to simply un-money people they don't like.

ggm 4y ago

If anyone can push back on criminal abuse of card services, its the card service industry. This is like CLI faking and telephony: the phone company ("TPC") has been very good at pushing back on regulation, SHAKEN/STIR is coming but its a way off. We all know that of the order 5 agencies do all the dark market card processing in the end. If they want to stop people making $ out of crime, they can, any time they choose for some cost, and consequence. They are happy to decide randomly to withdraw service from OnlyFans accounts, yet want to claim inability to police the CSAM issue? Come on! I don't entirely dislike this lawsuit. I think the semi-regulated public utility side of international card clearing needs to be talked about more. We depend on this stuff. It's not really a market any more, the HH index would not call this a fiercely competitive space with costs in Mastercard, Visa, JCB tending to a norm. (they are all immensely profitable, and they make good money out of allowing crime, within limits. Part of paywave being signed out was a shift in risk from the card companies back to consumers, so they now have more ability to avoid the results of lack of card security on the part of consumers. Unrelated to the CSAM issue here, but a sign of their strength)

codefreeordie 4y ago
On the one hand, it is true that the entrenched players here have an unreasonable amount of power, but... ...on the other hand, the consequence of pushing too hard in terms of making card networks responsible for the stuff bought through them is that we will increasingly find the card networks meddling in what kinds of businesses are allowed to accept their cards. And in the modern world, that means they become the ultimate and barely-accountable arbiters of what kinds of businesses are allowed to exist. We will be really unhappy with them having that power.
- ggm 4y ago
  Yes. I get this too. "its just money" is important, but that said, a mediating agent has always been in the role of declining to do business, there is no automatic right to a bank (title VI aside: they can't discriminate on some grounds in law) And right now, they're enabling crimes of all kinds. I know a forensic accountant, and she says cryptocurrencies are a delight to law enforcement because they are anything but anonymous. The implication I took from this is that the equivalent process chain in Visa and the like is actually harder.
  - codefreeordie 4y ago
    This is why cash is so necessary, and why we do need an actual cash economy. Without cash, it is too easy for the entrenched power base to simply un-money people they don't like.