On one hand, if a business generating almost $500M in revenue per year[1] is doing something illegal, it shouldn't be allowed to operate. Simple as that. If it is allowed to operate, then it should have access to the same payment methods as any other business.
On another hand, if I belonged to a group of people who believe that such companies shouldn't exist[2] and had no way of getting them banned completely, that's exactly what I would try to do: force their biggest business partners to cut ties with them.
I suspect if all businesses were held to this standard perfectly, there would be no businesses operating that generated $500M in revenue per year. Every business at that scale is doing something illegal somewhere. Not saying I agree with the state of things, but it seems businesses have decided occasional penalties for getting caught things illegal in jurisdictions that are capable of compelling them to pay the fine, are part of doing business.
If this standard were held perfectly and everyone knew it would be applied to them, businesses wanting to generate more revenue would adapt accordingly. Obviously violators of this standard exist today _because_ this standard is not enforced (i.e. laws without any "teeth" are not sufficiently motivating).
Moreover, is that bad? Is punishing people when they do something illegal bad?
> if I belonged to a group of people who believe that such companies shouldn’t exist..
This seems to be the only plausible explanation. Going after them by exploiting a legal technicality (hacking the law). I don’t know if I feel any better about this approach, than I do about the original allegation.
Perhaps, it’s the part of me seeking some order in this world, holding out for a more pure form of justice. An ideal that doesn’t exist in reality.
But this is like going after McDonald's because some drug dealers use their parking lots to conduct business.
(I don't necessarily agree with the allegation, but that is the allegation.)
I don't agree with the overall precedent that would be set, but it's hard to argue when Visa chose to stop working with certain parts of Mindgeek showing they knew CSAM existed. Visa made itself a moderator of content by deciding who it does and doesn't work with based on the kind of content they serve and that decision exposed them up to the consequences of Mindgeek's actions.
Payment processors are in a difficult position but I believe they should be treated like a utility, similar to electricity. If net neutrality was solidified in the US, Visa could potentially argue that it treats all data in a similar way and then the lack of moderation and Pornhub/Mindgeek alone would be at fault. But by by choosing what should and shouldn't be allowed on the platform of its customers, Visa becomes a responsible for when its customers break the law using its platform.
But you're right in that if a thing is illegal, it should be targeted directly and not by making private companies responsible for defining and enforcing "law".
Absent punishment, everybody will just drag all bystanders (from around any scene, there is somebody that disagrees with anything) into a court.
> Absent punishment, everybody will just drag all bystanders (from around any scene, there is somebody that disagrees with anything) into a court.
What a great description of the dysfunction of the US judicial system.
2) Visa, like any other business, must be allowed to use own judgement when deciding whom it's dealing with. They are no saint, though, because they probably noticed that they were dealing with PH (given its size) long enough ago and ignored what was going on there.
Not a pornhub fan, but I believe there are far more exploitative companies out there.
Would other companies that support pornhub/across in any way also be considered participants? Water supply/electricity/ internet providers/whoever sells them dildos/food
Selling child porn has a special place in the law in a way that "feeding suspected CP criminals" does not.
But storing is also special. Storing child porn is very illegal, so how far does that extend? Does AWS renting an EC2 instance to pornhub, knowing pornhub may store CP on it, mean AWS is complicit in storing child porn?
Does Western Digital selling an SSD to pornhub for their datacenter make WD complicit in storing child porn?
Does the data-center that leases them a server become complicit in storing and distributing CP?
In this analogy, Visa is in the same position as a power plant that provides electricity for Tesla cars.
I believe Visa should not be held legally accountable for the lack of action on Mindgeek/Pornhub in taking down and blocking reuploads of reported CSAM. However the issue is that Visa themselves have chosen to be a moderator of what content is allowed by its customers, regardless of the actual legality of the content. They do it indirectly by accepting and rejecting customers based on these guidelines that are not in line with what is or isn't allowed by law.
Based on a shallow reading of the court documents, Visa made essentially the same argument, that it stands an independent of the decisions of Mindgeek and those who uploaded the CSAM. The counter is the idea that Visa is at fault for giving Mindgeek/Pornhub/Uploaders of CSAM a platform to make money in the first place. That was a decision made by Visa. The fact that Visa already stopped being a payment processor for Pornhub/Mindgeek once in 2020 due to a NYT article about CSM shows that Visa was aware of and had control over how strictly Mindgeek/Pornhub polices the uploads for CSAM.
The case isn't about the existence of CSAM on Pornhub either, it's specifically calling out how Visa and Mindgeek has already profited from traffic generated by CSAM hosted on Pornhub.
In my analogy, it would be a power plant knowing the electricity they provide will be used in Tesla cars used by criminals to rob places. Tesla, in this example, knowingly selling cars that they know will be used for robberies and not doing anything about it. Tesla cars can't run without electricity, and the power plant makes money from selling the electricity to a group they know will use it up faster than the general driver.
Electricity and transportation is a regulated utility. I wonder if this case would not have a legal standing if net neutrality existed and a counter was made by Visa that it treats Mindgeek like any other media content provider and won't reject customers it provides services to, because it doesn't differentiate based on the specifics of the data. The website owners would still be responsible for host CSAM in that situation. Visa could potentially argue no joint understanding if net neutrality existed. Right now it's in contention because Visa has already shown it rejects and accepts customers based on their own rules about what kind of data is being served by its customers.
Visa's previous action to stop and then restart providing a platform to Mindgeek/Pornhub, after they removed unverified content, shows a clear understanding of what kind of media is served. By re-accepting them as a merchant, Visa opened itself up to being a beneficiary and conspirator in Pornhub making money from CSAM, by being the company that provides a way for Mindgeek to make money. Not from pornhub directly but by being a payment processor for the advertising arm of Mindgeek.
The specific issue is making money from CSAM, not the existence of CSAM.
Maybe it's time to regulate payment processors and turn them into utilities. That or create a national payment processor that does one thing and one thing only (process payments) under a transparent set of laws treating every traction equally.
I have no love for Visa or Mastercard. I'd rather not deal with them at all if I had an alternative that was just as convenient. It kind of crazy that with our modern tech and banking system we don't have that easy alternative and still have to keep these dinosaurs around just to easily pass numbers back and forth between banks.
Yes, which shows that when Visa was aware that Pornhub was (allegedly?) breaking the law, they stopped providing service to them. Only once Pornhub tightened their policies significantly (and removed all of their content from unverified users) did Visa resume...
And it definitely is about the existence of it, actually; one of the allegations is specifically that Pornhub had child porn, failed to police it, and Visa knew both of those things.
> MindGeek is being sued for knowingly monetizing child porn. Visa’s act of continuing to recognize MindGeek as a merchant is directly linked to MindGeek’s criminal act, as Visa’s act served to keep open the means through which MindGeek completed its criminal act knowing that that criminal act was being committed. At this early stage of the proceedings, before Plaintiff has had any discovery from which to derive Visa’s state of mind, the Court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn from the very fact that Visa continued to provide MindGeek the means to do so and knew MindGeek was indeed doing so. Put yet another way, Visa is not alleged to have simply created an incentive to commit a crime, it is alleged to have knowingly provided the tool used to complete a crime.
In this case Visa knows full well what they are enabling, by allowing payments to be processed on PH, especially given the volume of transactions, there's no way they don't know what they are supporting.
That only establishes that Visa is actually being accused of something illegal, i.e. Pornhub allegedly knowingly profiting from child porn and Visa allegedly providing payment services to Pornhub while allegedly knowing that Pornhub was using those payment services to profit from child porn (allegedly) would make Visa a participant in the alleged crime, if those allegiations turn out to be true. Hence Visa is a defendant in the court case where the truth of the allegiations will then be debated.
That's why the document you linked uses the word "allegedly" so often.
Only cash is able to protect the ability to do private transactions withouth any possibility of external dependencies or interference.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/net...
Basically, a court recently ruled that, since Visa is processing payments for ad purchases on Pornhub, Visa is a co-conspirator on all sex trafficking and child porn that Pornhub is involved with. Apparently Pornhub merely being alleged to have engaged in those activities is sufficient knowledge to constitute a "meeting of the minds" for Visa to become a participant in those activities.
(As you might imagine, I vehemently disagree with that ruling. But as it's the ruling that stands, it's the situation that Visa finds itself in, and were I in Visa's shoes, I'd do exactly the same thing they're doing now. They really don't want to be a part of this--and they really shouldn't be a part of this, and dumping Pornhub's ad purchases is the fastest route they can take to not be a part of this, as problematic as it is.)