News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving the legal marijuana trade. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving th... by CaptSpify on Thursday June 16, 2016 @01:40PM (#11917648)
Large financial institutions still dont play nicely with internet porn, which really isnt that ambiguous legally. I think a lot of it is PR as well. They dont want to be associated with moraly ambiguous industries
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving th... by ethbro on Thursday June 16, 2016 @02:17PM (#11917870)
A lot of this is a consequence of the George W Bush presidency, where the DoJ was encouraged to crack down on pornography using obscenity laws. From the histories I've read, one of the levers they used was informal pressure on financing institutions that served the distributors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity_Prosecution_Task_For...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Microsoft is the first big company to say it's serving th... by xaqfox on Thursday June 16, 2016 @02:40PM (#11918038)
I place the blame squarely on the Obama Justice Department's Operation Choke Point. The previous task force was at least targeted towards specific, named, businesses and brought them before a court--not a blanket, de-facto ban caused by threatening financial institutions, directly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

[ Parent | on HN ]