Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0983736882 | Hacker News Reader

> If they don’t like processing payments for pornography or adult content (including games)

Pornography and adult content is fine—the real issue is that gaming storefronts refuse to moderate their platforms for child pornography and rape material and would rather kill their entire NSFW catalog, all while painting themselves as the victims.

> If they don’t like processing payments for pornography or adult content (including games), then don’t be a payment processor. They’re a business, not a person, and therefore their “preferences” regarding content are irrelevant.

Businesses are composed of people whose preferences matter. No business should be forced to serve pedophiles and rape fetishists.

View on HN

I'm pretty sure child pornography is actually illegal in all jurisdictions valve operates in, and they would be charged with real crimes for selling it. Maybe you mean anime characters or something?

And is there any law about roleplaying rape? It's common in romance novels and online videos so I don't see how it could be illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Australia#Illeg...

> Some types of pornography (both real and fictitious) are technically illegal in Australia and if classified would be rated RC and therefore banned in Australia. This includes any pornography depicting violent BDSM, incest, paedophilia, zoophilia, certain extreme fetishes (such as golden showers) and/or indicators of youth (such as wearing a school uniform).

Fictitious violent fetishes and BSDM would likely be illegal in Australia.

Fair enough for the Australian market, but I'm not sure why the rest of the world should have to line up with that. Just block it for Australian accounts or such?

And that is what should have been done. Steam and Itch should have blocked content that is illegal in Australia from being seen or sold in Australia.

The problem is that they didn't properly identify which content it is. "Does it involve a school girl outfit giving the indication of youth?" isn't something that they can filter on.

I could see something in the future where when someone puts up phonographic, they can't select all for the countries it can be sold in and instead need to specifically affirm that it is content that is legal in each of the checked countries.

However, Steam and Itch don't currently do that. So when pressure by Collective Shout was moved from Steam and Itch to Mastercard and Visa, Mastercard and Visa almost immediately put pressure on their downstream processors which in turn put pressure Steam and Itch. Since Steam and Itch couldn't filter the "just illegal in Australia stuff needs to be removed from being available in Australia" they appear to have removed all NSFW content until it could be reviewed.

I believe the key thing in this chain is that Visa and Mastercard are very risk adverse. While they do make a lot of money, on a per transaction basis any merchant that is a problem is a very small drop in the bucket compared to the legal consequences they could (and have) face.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_v._Texas

Lest we forget.

Sure in the end people rallied to him but it sure must have sucked.

But yeah. Texas.

2002? Wild. I would have thought that kind of obscenity law died in the 80s...

The content is legal, and therefore your entire argument is irrelevant, as is your attempt to personify corporations. The whole point of being an adult is understanding that your personal tastes aren’t a mandate on others to comply for your comfort; in other words, if you dislike legal content, your sole recourse is to simply not engage with that content.

Go proselytize elsewhere.

> The content is legal

It's not. Look up the PROTECT Act of 2003. It's sad that we live in a world where payment processors of all things have to do the government's job.

You dislike MasterCard's and Visa's actually legal actions, your sole recourse is simply not to engage with them. Best of luck!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com