Quote:
Originally Posted by Moonchild
Anyone know how this might affect SA?
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IMHO, the Guberment will work through layers, like an onion. Sites with the seemingly weakest controls and protections will be the first to go. Sites with foreign ownership, hosted outside of the USA will be harder to crack.
BUT crack they will. Classic TV cop/lawyer dramas always say "follow the money". So the Guberment will.
The money in this instance is the payments made to place ads and/or payments to become members. It is not the money trail per se that will be tracked but the payment methods.
Specifically the credit card processing banks that move the money for the credit card issuer. They will be squeezed. And in turn the companies that issue the merchant account to handle the transaction for the website will be squeezed. And finally the site itself.
The US Guberment did the same thing on the adult digital/visual entertainment industry (aka p0rn) years ago. The US market more or less always had to have proof of age. The European markets were more lax, had different age rules (sometimes higher) or different documentation rules etc.
So the US Guberment squeezed all the banks and processing providers to document proof of age to meet US standards, even if you are outside of the USA.... or you don't get to process our credit cards.
Suddenly a lot of European content producers were dropping some of their long working models. Not because the 28 year old model with 3 kids was underage but because drivers license was expired and her birth certificate was lost in the quagmire of the former Soviet States.
Yes, it got that bad. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending upon one's perspective) there is always another person wanting to become a p0rn model.
In our little niche, the sites that survive will run a tight ship. For example, to accept ads from providers they could require multiple ID and/or verified billing address for provided credit cards (versus a fuzzy drivers license and a prepaid credit card from a discount department store).
And THAT is what the Guberment is trying to prevent.... somebody underage finding a fake DL and a prepaid CC and buying ads. Of course in the stupidity of the Guberment they got to go all excessive and over the top when a few simple rules would have accomplished the same goals.
