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Porn is legal and they still blackball it. Legalisation won't help this particular problem. The problem is having a cartel/duopoly for digital payment processin

Porn is legal and they still blackball it. Legalisation won't help this particular problem. The problem is having a cartel/duopoly for digital payment processing.

godelski 3y ago
I'm not going to disagree with your main point but the legal status does jeopardize any payment processing system. So it's at least a part of the issue that has to be resolved before we can talk about yours.
callalex 3y ago
The situation is more nuanced than that. Porn is sold online which introduces fraud issues. Much more importantly though it has an extremely (extremely!) high chargeback rate due to partners seeing a bill, confronting the payer, and then that payer claiming the charges are unauthorized and doubling down instead of admitting the purchase. Cannabis is physical retail with the most stringent ID verifications of any purchase in US history, so the fraud issue is almost nonexistent.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mock-possum 3y ago
  I think the whole chargeback thing is a bullshit excuse - it’s the customers that are abusing the chargeback, not the businesses. Why should they suffer for it. If a customer abuses the chargeback feature, punish them, not an entire sector of industry. It’s lenders like Visa being precious about their own customer’s behavior and I have no sympathy whatsoever.
another-dave 3y ago
Taking them at face value though, they're saying they're disallowing payments here specifically because it's illegal, rather than a disinclination to be associated with it for PR/as a value judgement: > "The federal government considers cannabis sales illegal, so these purchases are not allowed on our systems," the statement continued. I don't fully understand the US system but it feels weird to me that the power to legalise could be both devolved to the states but still federally illegal… Is it that it's illegal on an interstate level, like you can't purchase from out of state?
- callalex 3y ago
  “I don’t understand the US system” No, you understand the system perfectly fine. The current situation is completely dysfunctional. The federal government has absolute authority and supremacy on this matter, and has the legally uncontested ability to lock away any person involved in the production, distribution, sale, possession, and consumption of cannabis. However the people who are in charge of those federal police are fully aware of how deeply unpopular that would be, so they just turn a blind eye on a national scale and just choose not to take any action. Every now and then a random cannabis store will be raided by federal police as some kind of publicity stunt. Then the news articles and protests will flare up. Then we go back to the current situation of utter insanity. As a result of this illegal status, all banking surrounding the business is completely broken, and the entire industry runs on burly people with guns driving around duffel bags of cash, even to pay taxes to state and local governments. Please send help, our government is very broken.
  - peteradio 3y ago
    All it would take is the Supreme Court to reverse another precedent. The interpretation of interstate commerce is obviously wrong.
    - labcomputer 3y ago
      > The interpretation of interstate commerce is obviously wrong. Eh... I mean, yes, but not in the way you want. The constitution is clear about the federal government having the authority to regulate interstate commerce. Running a payment processor in, say, New York for customers (businesses) in California is very clearly interstate commerce. Your NY-based business is selling a service (payment processing) to another business in California. New York and California are difference states. You are engaging in commerce across state lines. There's no consistent way to interpret "[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes" in any meaningful way that still a) gives the federal government any control over interstate commerce; and b) prohibits the federal government from regulating this kind of interstate commerce. Wickard v. Filburn (which was overturned more than 25 years ago) was pretty obviously a stupid decision because there was nothing that wasn't interstate commerce under that ruling. I say it's stupid because why would the constitution give the congress the power to regulate specifically interstate commerce if it really meant they could regulate all commerce? That obvious contradiction is why it was overturned. It sounds like you're asking for a Wickard v Filburn-style decision, but in the other direction: Nothing is interstate commerce. I guess they could do that if you take the Justice Thomas approach that all the rules are made up, but then what's the point? Let's just dissolve congress and the supreme court and just have the president rule as he chooses.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Porn is legal in the same sense that Manifest Destiny, Blood Diamonds, Payday Loans, and Nike Shoes are legal.
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  Except all the examples you offered harm people, and porn harms people like water harms people.
  - joker_minmax 3y ago
    You should look into the GirlsDoPorn case where the actresses were forced into signing their contracts under duress. When they wanted their content removed because of this, PornHub enacted the most useless content recognition software ever, which ignored almost all the re-uploads, allowing them to continue making money off of the content. And the company that produced the content sent people to harass the women day and night. This was just a few years ago. While I am sure not every video was produced this way, this also cannot be a one-off, and saying it's purely harmless is incorrect. Unless your analogy about water is that it only harms you in a large amount, or when it has extreme force behind it?
    - thefurdrake 3y ago
      > porn harms people like water harms people My analogy is that water is fine until it's used in excess or in the wrong contexts. I dislike your use of "only" trying to restrict the reach of the analogy, though. Everything you described isn't related to porn, it's related to the porn industry. What you're really criticizing here is corporatism, not porn.
      - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        Nike shoes only harm people if you kick them, or throw one hard enough? Blood diamonds only harm people if they swallow too many?
nonameiguess 3y ago
This isn't even remotely true. Go to any regular old porn studio that has to comply with laws around casting and provide an address at the start of ever video you can write to in order to receive consent forms with ID verification of everyone in the film you're about to see, and every credit card on the planet will gladly allow you to make the purchase. What they block are open platforms that host user-generated content from anywhere in the world that make no attempt to comply with performer consent and age-verification laws of the jurisdictions they're attempting to sell in.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Well, the porn industry basically as a whole regularly pressures and somewhat "forces" women to do things they did not initially agree to. This is exploitative and rampant in the industry currently. But that doesn't make porn inherently bad, but rather that a grey market industry has ample opportunity to pressure the people in it to be exploitable.

Porn is legal and they still blackball it. Legalisation won't help this particular problem. The problem is having a cartel/duopoly for digital payment processing.

godelski 3y ago

I'm not going to disagree with your main point but the legal status does jeopardize any payment processing system. So it's at least a part of the issue that has to be resolved before we can talk about yours.

callalex 3y ago

The situation is more nuanced than that. Porn is sold online which introduces fraud issues. Much more importantly though it has an extremely (extremely!) high chargeback rate due to partners seeing a bill, confronting the payer, and then that payer claiming the charges are unauthorized and doubling down instead of admitting the purchase. Cannabis is physical retail with the most stringent ID verifications of any purchase in US history, so the fraud issue is almost nonexistent.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mock-possum 3y ago
I think the whole chargeback thing is a bullshit excuse - it’s the customers that are abusing the chargeback, not the businesses. Why should they suffer for it. If a customer abuses the chargeback feature, punish them, not an entire sector of industry. It’s lenders like Visa being precious about their own customer’s behavior and I have no sympathy whatsoever.

another-dave 3y ago

Taking them at face value though, they're saying they're disallowing payments here specifically because it's illegal, rather than a disinclination to be associated with it for PR/as a value judgement: > "The federal government considers cannabis sales illegal, so these purchases are not allowed on our systems," the statement continued. I don't fully understand the US system but it feels weird to me that the power to legalise could be both devolved to the states but still federally illegal… Is it that it's illegal on an interstate level, like you can't purchase from out of state?

callalex 3y ago
“I don’t understand the US system” No, you understand the system perfectly fine. The current situation is completely dysfunctional. The federal government has absolute authority and supremacy on this matter, and has the legally uncontested ability to lock away any person involved in the production, distribution, sale, possession, and consumption of cannabis. However the people who are in charge of those federal police are fully aware of how deeply unpopular that would be, so they just turn a blind eye on a national scale and just choose not to take any action. Every now and then a random cannabis store will be raided by federal police as some kind of publicity stunt. Then the news articles and protests will flare up. Then we go back to the current situation of utter insanity. As a result of this illegal status, all banking surrounding the business is completely broken, and the entire industry runs on burly people with guns driving around duffel bags of cash, even to pay taxes to state and local governments. Please send help, our government is very broken.
- peteradio 3y ago
  All it would take is the Supreme Court to reverse another precedent. The interpretation of interstate commerce is obviously wrong.
  - labcomputer 3y ago
    > The interpretation of interstate commerce is obviously wrong. Eh... I mean, yes, but not in the way you want. The constitution is clear about the federal government having the authority to regulate interstate commerce. Running a payment processor in, say, New York for customers (businesses) in California is very clearly interstate commerce. Your NY-based business is selling a service (payment processing) to another business in California. New York and California are difference states. You are engaging in commerce across state lines. There's no consistent way to interpret "[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes" in any meaningful way that still a) gives the federal government any control over interstate commerce; and b) prohibits the federal government from regulating this kind of interstate commerce. Wickard v. Filburn (which was overturned more than 25 years ago) was pretty obviously a stupid decision because there was nothing that wasn't interstate commerce under that ruling. I say it's stupid because why would the constitution give the congress the power to regulate specifically interstate commerce if it really meant they could regulate all commerce? That obvious contradiction is why it was overturned. It sounds like you're asking for a Wickard v Filburn-style decision, but in the other direction: Nothing is interstate commerce. I guess they could do that if you take the Justice Thomas approach that all the rules are made up, but then what's the point? Let's just dissolve congress and the supreme court and just have the president rule as he chooses.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

Porn is legal in the same sense that Manifest Destiny, Blood Diamonds, Payday Loans, and Nike Shoes are legal.

thefurdrake 3y ago
Except all the examples you offered harm people, and porn harms people like water harms people.
- joker_minmax 3y ago
  You should look into the GirlsDoPorn case where the actresses were forced into signing their contracts under duress. When they wanted their content removed because of this, PornHub enacted the most useless content recognition software ever, which ignored almost all the re-uploads, allowing them to continue making money off of the content. And the company that produced the content sent people to harass the women day and night. This was just a few years ago. While I am sure not every video was produced this way, this also cannot be a one-off, and saying it's purely harmless is incorrect. Unless your analogy about water is that it only harms you in a large amount, or when it has extreme force behind it?
  - thefurdrake 3y ago
    > porn harms people like water harms people My analogy is that water is fine until it's used in excess or in the wrong contexts. I dislike your use of "only" trying to restrict the reach of the analogy, though. Everything you described isn't related to porn, it's related to the porn industry. What you're really criticizing here is corporatism, not porn.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      Nike shoes only harm people if you kick them, or throw one hard enough? Blood diamonds only harm people if they swallow too many?

nonameiguess 3y ago

This isn't even remotely true. Go to any regular old porn studio that has to comply with laws around casting and provide an address at the start of ever video you can write to in order to receive consent forms with ID verification of everyone in the film you're about to see, and every credit card on the planet will gladly allow you to make the purchase. What they block are open platforms that host user-generated content from anywhere in the world that make no attempt to comply with performer consent and age-verification laws of the jurisdictions they're attempting to sell in.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Well, the porn industry basically as a whole regularly pressures and somewhat "forces" women to do things they did not initially agree to. This is exploitative and rampant in the industry currently. But that doesn't make porn inherently bad, but rather that a grey market industry has ample opportunity to pressure the people in it to be exploitable.